


The Arcane ScoRA and the Wand of MacArt

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-20
Updated: 2009-07-11
Packaged: 2019-01-19 12:29:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 45,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12410337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: When Albus, Rose, and Scorpius are put on the train to their first year at Hogwarts, their parents have simple hopes for them. Namely to have the normal, boring school years they never got to experience themselves. But sometimes, we ask too much of our children.When the school becomes plagued by invasions of wild beasts, three different students from three ...





	1. Chapter 1   A Quiet Compartment Ride

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

 

 

Chapter 1 A Quiet Compartment Ride

 

Albus watched as the familiar faces of his family became more and more blurred in the distance. His mother and his sister, both beginning to cry, his aunt and uncle distracted at the moment by their younger son running in circles, and his father never breaking eye contact until his form faded out of sight. Gradually, as Kings Cross itself vanished, the students that had been fighting for one last glimpse of their families began to disappear. But, even after all the other students had left the windows in search of their compartments, Albus still lingered.

“Alright, Albus, enough with the window,” exclaimed Rose, tugging at the collar of his shirt. “We have to find a seat. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the compartments are already full by now!”

As Rose dragged him down the corridor, Albus was able to maintain an awkward sideways shuffle as he followed behind. Of course Rose wasn’t afraid to start her year at Hogwarts. Rose was reading her textbooks before they had even left Flourish and Blotts. She could recognize all her basic potions ingredients by sight, smell, and texture, and was already fully dressed in her robes. Yes, Rose wasn’t afraid of anything. She was a true Gryffindor if ever there was one.

“Ugh,” groaned Rose as she slammed yet another door shut, “all these compartments are filled to the brim!”

Albus hadn’t actually been worried about what house he would get into. His parents were Gryffindors, his grandparents were Gryffindors, his cousins were all Gryffindors, and even his older brother was a Gryffindor. So it would stand to reason that he would be one too. At least it did until that summer day, when James had planted that horrible notion in his head.

“When you get sorted into Slytherin, you better sleep with one eye open,” he had told Albus. “The slime from that house are just as likely to turn on their own as they would anyone else.”

The statement had caught Albus so off guard, he nearly fell off the swing.

“Why would you say something like that?” he asked his brother, anxious to know why he would even consider that possibility.

“Well, Albus,” James began to explain as if the subject matter were much more casual, “I’m just saying nobody knows what house they’re going to be sorted into. You could be in Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, _Slytherin_ …”

James put a special emphasis on that last word.

“I’m going to be in _Gryffindor_!” Albus insisted.

“Alright,” James shrugged his shoulders. “But just remember, Albus, Gryffindor is ‘ _where dwell the brave of heart'_. How many things have you done that could be considered brave?”

But before Albus could think of a good comeback, their mother called them for lunch, leaving the subject open. Allowing it to be a thought that could haunt Albus for the rest of the summer.

“C’mon, Victoire,” Rose complained through the locked door, “we can’t find anywhere to sit!”

“Sorry,” she shouted, unlocking the door for only an instant as she and her sister shoved a semi-drooling sixth-year out of her compartment, “busy.”

“”Oh, c’mon veela girls,” he whined, banging on the door, “show me some love!”

“Boys,” Rose grumbled under her breath as she continued to drag Albus along the corridor. Situations like that were not uncommon in Albus and Rose’s family. It was just one of those things that went along with having veelas for cousins.

“Well, I flat out REFUSE to sit with James and Fred,” Rose declared loudly, beginning to stop her feet. “The second we let our guard down they’ll do something horrible like…like-”

“Hex our foreheads together?” suggested Albus.

“Not so loud!” Rose scolded in a hushed tone. “They might hear you!”

But ever since his brother had mentioned it, Albus had begun to wonder when he had ever been brave. James was brave; he had known that for years. James would climb out on the roof just to see the view, he would stand up to the bullies who would go after Albus for being a wimp or Lily for being a baby, and he had once thrown a rock at the neighbor's dog just to prove he could outrun it. Their parents called all those things stupid and pigheaded, but Albus knew that his brother was brave.

And of course, his mother and father were brave; they had fought in a war against one of the most powerful dark wizards of all time. His father had faced that same dark Lord on eight different occasions and never ran away. If that was the kind of bravery it took to be a Gryffindor, Albus wasn’t sure he would make it.

“Look,” she pointed toward an older boy with a black and yellow badge on his chest, “that Hufflepuff boy’s a prefect; I bet he’ll help us find somewhere to sit!”

Rose was brave for sure. She was able to walk up to a complete stranger and demand what she wanted, not the least bit bothered by the consequences.

“Excuse me,” Rose asked, tugging on the prefect’s robes, pulling him away from a conversation he was having with a very pretty girl who was also a Hufflepuff, “Can you help us? My cousin and I can’t find a compartment.”

It was obvious that the prefect would have much rather kept on with his conversation and not even acknowledge that fact that Albus and Rose were there. But first year students were the collective responsibility of all the prefects. So until Albus and Rose were sorted, there was very little he could do about it.

“Alright,” he said, gritting his teeth as he spoke, “follow me, please.”

Rose followed so close behind the prefect she was almost stepping into his shoes. Having finally let go of Albus, he himself was walking a few steps further behind.

“Oh, look,” the prefect said, opening a nearby compartment door after peering in. “This compartment has room. There’s only one kid in here.”

When Rose peeked from behind the prefect to look inside, Albus was convinced that he saw the color of her face change by at least three shades. When he finally caught up, he could see why. In the compartment, sitting all by himself, was a pale blond boy wearing very fine clothes and a look of someone who had just smelled something disgusting. No one needed to tell Albus who this was, even though neither he, nor his cousin had ever seen this boy before. This was clearly a member of the Malfoy family, a family name that could make his uncle Ron turn bright red and scream at the top of his lungs in a matter of seconds.

“Did you hear me, kid?” the prefect repeated in an annoyed tone, although Albus hadn’t heard him ask the first time. “Is it okay if these two sit with you?”

The Malfoy boy looked at the prefect as though he had lost his mind, but didn't say a word. On the one hand, he didn’t want to get in trouble with a prefect before the train even arrived at Hogwarts. But then again, he seemed to know exactly who their families were too.

"But…” he tried to counter. “him…and that girl...”

“She’s not going to kiss you; she just wants a place to sit.”

“I…,” he tried, his words weaker and more unsure than his previous attitude would have implied, “don’t know.”

“Too bad,” the prefect answered, practically shoving Albus and Rose into the compartment. “Have fun, I’ll see you all at Christmas.”

With that, the door was slid shut, leaving the three first years in a very awkward silence; Albus twittleing his fingers and trying is best to keep from making eye contact, Rose becoming impatient and tapping her foot in rapid rhythm, and Scorpius slouched against his seat with his arms crossed and an annoyed glare that he directed right at Albus and Rose. It was a scene that was in its own way disturbing. Albus wasn't sure how long he and Rose just stood there. It might have been easier to move to their seat if that Malfoy boy would just stop staring at them!

“So,” Albus finally asked, “we can sit?”

“Sure,” the boy answered a little too quickly, as though he might rethink his answer. “I mean, I guess.”

Albus and Rose slid down next to each other on the opposite seat, but held themselves stiffly in a way that seemed unnatural. For a long time, no one made a sound or even dared to move. Albus counted the cracks on the ceiling, Rose kicked her shoes against the carpeted floor, and the Malfoy boy just sat with his head rested against the window, the glare that had once been directed at Albus and Rose now focused on the passing country side. 

Eventually, Rose pulled out one of what had to be a dozen books packed in her bulky carryon 

“What are you reading?” asked the Malfoy boy with a type of superior sneer on his in an attempt to mask his genuine curiosity.

Albus stopped counting at one hundred seventeen and looked down to realize the boy across from them was finally making genuine eye contact.

“ _Unfogging the Future_ ,” she told him, glancing up. “We won’t actually be studying Divination until our third year, but it’s the only one of my mother’s old school books she’d let me have.”

“That’s because Divination was the only class Aunt Hermione never got perfect scores in,” Albus tried to joke, a habit he had whenever he was nervous. “I swear, Rosie reads that book just to annoy her!”

To his surprise, the Malfoy boy uttered a small chuckle. It too was a nervous, edgy sounding laugh, but at least it help to ease the mood. Afterwards, the Malfoy boy finally sat up into a more comfortable, relaxed position. Albus, too, felt his own back unclench and the compartment itself become less tense. Rose, however, had become completely immersed in her book, but there was a faint almost-smile on her face. As next moments passed in silence, even the very air seemed to get lighter.

Despite this new level of ease, Albus still wasn't quite sure to think of the boy who was sitting across from him. He had grown up hearing all of his parents’ old war stories, and his Uncle Ron's comical rants. And in every single one of them, it somehow told of how the Malfoys were traitors, how the Malfoys were pure blood fanatics who wouldn't consider his Aunt Hermione a level above the dirt under their shoes, and how the Malfoys were just awful people in general. But this boy, even though Albus wasn't sure he was exactly friendly, certainly was not living up to the horror stories he had heard all his life. Unfortunately, the next person who _did_ come into the compartment, was the last one on earth who would think that.

“ALBUS,” called a loud, but oh so familiar voice accompanied by a loud slamming noise as the door was pushed open. “Hey, I’ve been looking all over for you. I-”

His brother, James, was soon stopped dead in his words, something Albus himself had only seen twice in his life. Raising a shaky hand, he pointed towards the Malfoy boy, who, in turn, returned a very hard glare.

"Hi, James." Albus shifted in his seat, worried he had done something to anger his older brother.

But if James was angry, he certainly wasn't sharing it with anyone. He stood silent and nearly shaking, looking as though he may explode. Eventually, Rose noticed her older cousin's display, which was enough of a distraction to make her stop reading.

"Is something wrong?" asked Rose, eyes peering over the top of her book cover.

Finally, James seemed to shake himself out of his self-induced trance, but the anger was still displayed plainly on his face. He was, however, able to hold in his rage long enough to step in front Albus and Rose and grab them each by their sleeves.

"Can I speak to you two in private?" James asked, pulling the younger children up off their seats, so it wasn't really a request.

Dragging each of the younger children by their elbows, he led them out into the corridor and turned to slam the door shut. It was such a loud, deafening sound, Albus was sure he heard a girl scream in the compartment to the left.

“Have you two lost your minds?” his brother scolded in a half hushed shout. “What are you thinking, sitting with a Malfoy?”

“Excuse me” the Malfoy boy spoke up, peering through the slight opening left by the door.

“There weren’t any other opened seats!” Rose explained, stomping her foot against the floor.

"Did you just defend me _and_ insult me at the same time?"

"WAS I TALKING TO YOU, DEATH EATER SPAWN?" James yelled back through the cracked opening.

This was a new side to his brother that Albus had never seen before. Of course, he had always known his brother was a bit of a hothead and would not censer his feelings for anyone. What it was that shocked Albus was that his brother was getting into what had to be an argument for the record books about someone he didn't even know. Albus knew that James took after their Uncle Ron in many ways, the blind hate for the Malfoy family being only one of them. Although, he had a lot of trouble taking his older brother's rantings to heart. It was true that this Malfoy boy had certainly been less than hospitable, but still, the demonized, boogieman version of a member of the Malfoy family didn't seem to resonate with the boy Albus had been sharing his compartment with.

"You both know I would have gladly made room for you, if I had known THIS is what you had been reduced to!” James offered, lowering his voice to a whisper.

“Yeah, right,” retorted Rose, not losing an ounce of her previous volume, “and spend the entire train ride looking over our shoulders while you and Fred plot our doom!”

James didn't have a reply to that. He knew well enough that Rose didn't trust him as far as she could throw a Quaffle. But between the fire cracker shampoo, the dung bomb gumballs, backyard duel club, and the famed hippogryff talon dare that resulted in Rose's permanent inability to whistle, this was probably very wise reasoning. And James himself had never actually met a member of the Malfoy family, so he didn't have any evidence to offer Rose that she would be safer with him and Fred. If there was one thing James knew, there was no use in trying to out argue Rose Athena Weasley.

“But anyway, Al,” James said, shaking his head as he tried to calm down. “I came to find you so I could give you this.”

“Thanks,” Albus answered unsurely as his brother dropped some pocket money into his waiting palm.

“Mum says to share with Rose,” he added as he adjusted his glasses.

“I have my _own_ money, thank you,” Rose snapped, throwing the compartment door open and making the Malfoy boy jump.

Once again grabbing his collar, Rose dragged Albus back to their seats and sat down in a huff. She snapped her book back open and didn't give James as much as a parting glance.

“Don’t get too friendly!” he warned, mostly to the Malfoy boy, before he slid the door shut.

As soon as James left, the compartment reverted back to the uncomfortable silence it had held before. The Malfoy boy glared out the window, clearly angry, Rose holding her book three inches from her nose, also angry, and Albus shifting uncomfortably in his seat, wishing he could have a different compartment. No one talking, no one moving, not even when the trolley lady came by with sweets. A person could always tell things were bad when Rose wasn't even interested in adding to her Chocolate Frog card collection.

The Malfoy boy kicked at the floor with his bottom lip out, seeming to sulk at the silence as well. He had a very distinct glare directed at the door that James had recently exited from. It was all to clear that he didn't think too much of James either. But then, neither did a lot of people, potential Slytherin or not. But as the time and the scenery passed, Albus watched the rage slowly disappear from his face and gradually return to its previous look of boredom.

“Soooo…” the Malfoy boy began in that same bored tone, being the one to break the silence once again, “your name is Albus?”

Albus nodded, still feeling a little bit too shaken to speak.

“And you are…Rose?” he asked again, although he still hadn't turned his attention away from the window.

“Yes, Rose Weasley,” she answered proudly, finally setting the book down for good.

“Which one?” Scorpius asked, turning his gaze to Rose when he did not get an instant answer. “I mean, which one is your father?”

“Ronald Weasley,” Rose told him, wrinkling her forehead and raising one eyebrow in suspicion, “Why?”

“Oh, just curious,” Scorpius explained with a slight sneer in his expression. “My father told me there are more Weasleys than you can count, so I just wanted to be sure.”

“You really have no manners, do you?” Rose snapped, a small flare of her temper beginning to grow.

“And you have no tact,” he responded, remaining as cool as ever. “And your father is the famous Saint Harry Potter?”

“Yeah,” Albus replied, not quite sure how to react to this nickname. “People don’t stop reminding me.”

“And your father’s name is Draco Malfoy, and your name is Scorpius,” Rose spoke up in a haughty sounding tone that easily matched Scorpius’. “My dad pointed you out to me on the platform. I’m also supposed to beat you on every examination.”

“Hmph,” Scorpius snorted under his breath with a smirk on his face. “Good luck!”

“Rose, Albus,” came a softer sounding, but also familiar voice on the other side of the door.

As Victoire gently slid the compartment door open, Albus watched the expression on Scorpius’ face become a mixture of shock, awe, and shyness. In short, the normal response of any male under the age of thirty when he laid eyes on Victoire Weasely, Gryffindor house's both pride and prime cause of foolishness among the male student population.

But Albus and Rose were both used to this as well. Of all the members of her family, Victoire was the one who best retained their veela roots. Her long, reddish blond hair cascaded down her back, a few stray strands sweeping over her bright blue eyes. Her quiet smile flashed a few of her perfect teeth, but Albus and Rose were some of the few who were no longer affected by their cousin’s mere appearance.

Albus was simply happy to see his older, more compassionate cousin, and Rose's eyes rested on the Head Girl badge pinned to Victoire’s robes. Outside the compartment, however, Albus could hear Victoire’s two younger siblings, Dominique and Louis, pacing anxiously as she spoke. Unlike their older sister, even though Dominique too held some degree of awe striking beauty, those two were as much Weasleys as their father was.

“Sorry about before," Victoire apologized, "but James told me who you were sitting with and I figured you could use some rescuing.”

“It’s alright,” Albus assured her. “We sort of had a good time.”

“Of course you did,” she smiled sympathetically. “Anyway, we’ll be arriving in ten minutes, so Albus, you change into your robes, and the both of you get all your things together. I’ll wait outside for you.

In the same fashion Rose had shown since she got her Hogwarts letter; she didn’t wait one more second to get ready than she needed to. She was the first one of the three to push herself off the seat and, being already dressed in her robes, started towards the door to join her cousins.

“Another relative of yours?” Scorpius asked with that same sneer in his voice.

“Yeah,” Rose answered, shoving her book back into her bag, “we have too many to count, remember?”

Albus laughed a little at his cousin's response. Sure, this Malfoy boy may have been a little bit of a snob, but he seemed nice enough to Albus. And Rose had made it very clear during the train ride that she could take care of herself.

“That’s Victoire Weasley,” Albus explained after Rose had left, pointing to his older cousin's silhouette. “She’s Head Girl, so she could help you out with anything you need too.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Scorpius answered sarcastically, showing exactly how much he took that advice to heart.

“Albus,” Victoire called again, her voice sounding further away this time. “We’re leaving without you!”

“Well, I guess I'll see you at the castle," Albus said as he shuffled towards the door.

“Yeah,” Scorpius answered. “I’ll see you.” 


	2. Chapter 2   An Unexpected Sorting Ceremony

 Chapter 2  
An Unexpected Sorting Ceremony

 “OW! Stop pushing!”

“Well, move faster!”

One by one, sometime by twos, three, or fours, the students pushed their way off the train. The first year students seemed especially eager to get out onto the platform. In the rush of it all, Albus had lost Rose. He tried to pick out her face in the dim, bobbing light, or the face of anyone else he might recognize among the many dozens. Slowly, he began to feel the butterflies creeping into his stomach, and with that feeling, the fear of the idea of not being brave also began to resurface.

“All firs’ years over here!” Albus heard a loud voice sound above all others, “Firs’ years over here!”

Even in the dim light, Albus could easily recognize large form towering over the heads of the other students. Pushing his way through the crowd, getting shove back a few times himself, Albus emerged at the front of the first year group and was rewarded with a wave and a hearty “’ello”.

“Hagrid!” exclaimed Albus, happy to see a familiar face, “Oh, sorry; _Professor_ Hagrid.”

“S’alright, young Albus,” Hagrid assured him with a bushy smile, “but don’t think that _Professor_ stuff ‘ill get ye out of coming to tea like you promised.”

“Don’t worry,” Albus assured him, “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Al’ight, all the firs’ years here?” Hagrid repeated once again as the last of the student crowded around him. “Okay, follow me. Watch yer step!”

Hagrid led Albus and the others along a well-worn, but completely dark path. The hushed whispers mixed with the sound of stumbling steps as the blind students felt their way through the dark.

“We’re almost at the lake,” Hagrid announced. “Yeh’ll get yer first looks at Hogwarts very soon.”

Directly in front of them, perched along the ledge of the mountains, stood Hogwarts Castle, more miraculous looking than Albus had ever heard it described in words. Apparently, Albus was not alone in his opinions. All around him, the quiet chatter had ceased completely as his future classmates joined him in craning their heads up towards the view.

“No more’n four to a boat,” Hagrid told everyone as he pointed to a small fleet of rowboats at the edge of the lake.

Feeling a push from behind him, Albus reluctantly made his way towards the boats. He still had not found Rose and didn’t see her in any of the boats off to his sides. The other three students that he shared the boat with included a small blonde girl with freckles who could only be described as adorable, a dark haired, dark eyed boy who kept his gaze on the castle, and a jittery little girl with pale brown hair whose head turned in every direction.

“Everybody set?” Hagrid shouted. “Alright-FORWARD!”

With a sudden lurch, all the boat move simultaneously forward onto the dark lake. A cool wind blew against the students, who clutched at their robes, and the waves gently rocked them from side to side.

In the glinting lantern light ahead of him, he was able to make out the shape of Rose. He tried to get her attention by shouting and waving, but Rose kept her head down, clutching her book bag tightly. Could people get seasick if they weren't technically at sea? Even with the poor lantern light, he could tell that Rose did look a little green.

Suddenly, everyone in the boat fell forward as the boats hit land, not so gently. The underground cavern they now journeyed through was dripping wet and gave a sharp echoing sound as four dozen pairs of shoes scampered across the pebbles and loose earth.

When the stony path gave way to grass, there was finally enough light to see a large door in front of them. Hagrid gave three loud banging knocks before the doors opened to reveal yet another face familiar to Albus.

Less dirt-clad than usual and trying to maintain a dignified expression, was Neville Longbottom: Herbology professor, head of Gryffindor house, and a long time friend of their families, as well as Albus’ godfather. The difference in demeanor and stance came as a little bit of a shock to Albus, who was used to the Neville who would visit out of the blue, and sneak treats to the Potter children when no one was looking. When in the comfortable setting of home, Neville had always been a kind and understanding person. Would all that change now that his role had changed to Professor Longbottom?

“Welcome to Hogwarts,” he smiled at the new students. “The start-of-the-term banquet will start very soon, but before that, you will be seated in the Great Hall, and before that, you will be sorted into your houses.”

Albus heard a few very distinct sound gulps from the students behind him. At least he knew he wasn’t the only one that was nervous.

“While you are here, your house will become somewhat of a family to you. You will go to classes together, you will sleep in the dormitories with them, eat in the Great Hall with them, and spend your free time in your common rooms with them.”

Speaking of families, when Albus looked to his side, he saw that Rose had finally found him. He was immensely relieved to see a familiar face, but he noticed his cousin still looked a bit green and shaky. He wondered if she would even eat anything during the feast.

“They are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin,” Professor Longbottom listed, though it was clear from the tone of his voice, which houses one did _not_ want to get sorted into. “Throughout the year, house points will be granted or taken away based on merit. At the end of the year, the house with the most points will be awarded the House Cup.”

“I won't keep you waiting any longer. If you'll follow me, we are ready to begin the Sorting Ceremony.”

Before leading them into the Great Hall, Professor Longbottom looked Albus straight in the eyes and gave him a smile and a wink. At that moment, Albus gave a sigh of relief, knowing that the proper Neville was mostly a show.

When the giant doors of the Great Hall opened, there was yet another collective awe among the first year students. Between the floating candles, the ceiling bewitched to look like the night sky, the high table of their future teachers, and Headmaster Flitwick, who barely sat with his chin above the surface; it was almost too much to take in at once. As they walked down through the row between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, Albus watched as he and Rose were greeted by James, eight of their cousins from the Weasley family, and several people who simply knew the name Potter.

At the very front of the hall, at the top of a small staircase, stood a stool with a very old, very worn hat slumped on top of it. That hat became the focus of attention for most of the students in the hall, except for a few naïve first year who did not know the hats significance. But when Professor Longbottom climbed to the top of the stairs, and stood next to the hat, something happened that gained the rest of the hall’s occupant’s attention. A rip in the hat opened like a mouth, and the hat burst into song.

__  
“Here we are yet again,  
Like all the years before,  
Students, they have come and gone,  
But always, we find more.  
And it’s my job to sort them   
All into their respected houses,  
For I’m the Hogwarts Sorting Hat,  
Yes, you can bet your blouses  
You may not understand my decisions now,  
You make think me a fool,  
But I will do what’s best for you,  
That is my only rule.  
Now that may be in Gryffindor,  
Should I find you have the nerve,  
For you may well be call upon,  
To fight, defend, and serve.  
Or maybe perhaps in Hufflepuff,  
If you desire to prove yourself,  
Fair play and hard work shall be your path,  
If that’s the hand you’re dealt.  
But still, then, there is Ravenclaw,  
Where if you can make the grade,  
The world will be your oyster,  
If you can use your brain.  
Despite your thoughts on Slytherin,  
And its checkered past,  
With cunning friends and street smarts,  
They’ll never finish last.  
So step on up now, don’t be shy,  
There’s nothing here to fear,  
For if you weren’t worthy of this school,  
You wouldn’t even be here!  


There was a loud roar of applause, the loudest coming from the new first years, as soon as the song was finished. When it died down, Professor Longbottom picked up the hat with one hand, and in the other, he let a long roll of parchment unroll towards the floor.

“Now, I’m going to read your names off in alphabetical order. When you hear your name called, come and take a seat upon the stool, and you will be sorted into your houses,” Professor Longbottom explained, turning his eyes towards the parchment. “Ackerbare, Helen.”

Albus felt a gentle push at his back, as he watched the first student make her way through the crowd, up the steps, and onto the stool. Professor Longbottom placed the hat over her head, which was so big on her, it nearly came down to her nose.

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Ackhart, Georgia.”

A curly haired girl walked up to the platform with an air of false confidence. When the sorting hat was place on her head and over her eyes, she took a sharp intake of breath.

“GRYFFINDOR!”

When the hat was lifted off her head, the girl smiled a winning smile as though she knew she had just gotten into the best house in Hogwarts.

“ _Lucky_!” Albus muttered under his breath as Georgia took her seat among the Gryffindors.

This was going to take a very long time. A boy behind Albus yawned loudly as Baker, Nicole was the first to be sorted into Hufflepuff. Albus shifted from his left foot to his right, and then back again. Yes, a very, _very_ long time.

“Bletchley, Maris.”

“SLYTHERIN!”

Albus looked out onto those seated at the Gryffindor table. When he did, nearly half the table waved at him, prompting him to wave back weakly. Most of the faces see saw, he didn’t recognize. But as he scanned the smiling crowd, he was finally able to find a few people his seen at least twice in his life.

Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur’s children, Victoire, Dominique, and Louis were sitting at the front, closest to the first years. Unlike their older sister, Dominique and Louis were just as much Weasleys as the rest of the family was. Louis had the famous Weasley red hair and freckle, with gigantic hands, ears, and an even larger heart. But Dominique, on the other hand, looked more like a smaller version of Victoire, with strawberry blond hair and breathtaking eyes, and all the graces of a veela that she refused to grace the Gryffindor boys with. According to his uncles and grandparents, she took after their Uncle Percy. Albus guessed that meant that Dominique was a tattletaling busybody. His parents got more letters from Dominique about things James had done than they had gotten from James himself.

“Canning, Jodie.”

“GRYFFINDOR!”

“Carmichael, Kian.”

“RAVENCLAW!”

But as much as Dominique seemed to take after Uncle Percy, his own daughters, Molly and Lucy, seemed as different from their father as they could be. Their lives completely revolved around having fun, lives that didn’t seem to include homework, acknowledging their curfews at school or at home, and especially did not include Dominique Weasley. And with their father spending most of his day at the Ministry and their mother, Audrey, who wasn’t home much more than her husband, that made it pretty easy to do.

Davies, Freya.”

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Edwin, Leo.”

“GRYFFINDOR!”

“Fawcett, Jay.”

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Finch-Flechley, Grace.”

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

Uncle George’s children, Fred and Roxanne, were harder to see, as they were back next to James. Albus knew from his brother’s school stories and the numerous owls that came from Hogwarts at least once a week, that James and Fred were the Weasley twins reincarnated. If it wasn’t illegally smuggling Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes into school, it was changing the entry passwords to words that made students red in the face, or the famed attempt to shave Mrs. Norris. But if an exciting seven years at Hogwarts was what you were looking for, those two were defiantly the go-to guys. Or if you lived in the girls’ dormitories, _Roxanne_ was your go-to girl. She seemed much better at getting away with everything than James and Fred did, with her innate ability to cry her way out of any detention or punishment.

“Foss, Gavin.”

“GRYFFINDOR!”

“Goldstein, Noah.”

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Goodrich, Violet.”

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

Albus watched the group of people get smaller and smaller and the four house tables gradually fill up with first year students. There was a noticed difference in the level of ease between the children who sat at the tables and the students, who stood before the platform with no house to their name.

“Hurst, Lauren.”

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

“Inglebee, Jude.”

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Leach, Gina.”

“RAVENCLAW!”

“Karamanlis, Thalia.”

“SLYTHERIN!”

A blond girl named Macmillan, Fairfax was sorted into Hufflepuff, and as soon as she took her seat at the yellow and black decorated table, one of the names of someone that Albus had been looked forward to seeing sorted was called.

“Malfoy, Scorpius.”

If Scorpius was nervous, he certainly didn’t show it. He remained as cool as he was on the train as he took a seat on the stool and allowed the hat to be placed on his head. It took longer to sort Scorpius than it did to sort most of the other students. In fact, if Albus could have gotten a closer look, he could almost swear that Scorpius was fighting with the hat. But when the answer finally came, it was the one that most people had expected.

“SLYTHERIN!”

Scorpius gave an indifferent shrug, as though he had never really cared to begin with, and sauntered off the Slytherin table. From the Gryffindor table, Albus saw James gave him one of his I-told-you-so smirks. No Malfoy had been sorted into a house other than Slytherin since the middle ages, and apparently this generation would be no different.

“Oswald, Micah.”

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

“Paddock, Ruby.”

“GRYFFINDOR!”

Albus was trying to keep track of how many students had been sorted into Gryffindor. Let’s see, there was that first girl, Georgia. Then there was another girl named Joanne Canning, then Leo somebody. And then there was another girl named Maeve…or was it Mitzi? Wait, wasn’t there a Mitzi sorted into Hufflepuff? Did the Sorting hat just put this last girl in Gryffindor too? This was really the type of thing he should have been asking Rose for help wi-

“Potter, Albus.”

There was a murmured hush as soon as Albus’ name was called. Slowly, like so many others before him, Albus walked up the steps and took his seat on the stool. Before he could say different, the hat was placed onto his head and over his eyes. It felt a lot heavier than he thought it would.

“Hmmmm…,” the hat hummed, its voice seeming to speak right into his head. “Another difficult member of the Potter clan. You are intelligent, no doubt. Talented, some ways more than others. And a family legacy you feel you need to live up to. Soooooo…where, oh where, oh where, oh where shall I place you…”

“ _…not Slytherin…_ ” Albus was able to mutter weakly, hardly the strength necessary when one is arguing for one’s future.

“Well, your father may have done well in Slytherin, but I’m not a hundred percent sure that it’s the place for you,” the hat explained. “For a Slytherin, ambition will lead them to do whatever it takes to get what they want, but you have limits. You have goals and dreams, but you would never betray a friend or a family member to achieve them. In fact, I think it’s accurate to say you would die before you would do anything to harm someone you love.”

“ _Why’s the hat telling me what I would and wouldn’t die for?_ ” Albus thought to himself. “ _I’m eleven; I don’t even know these things!_ ”

“There is a noble boldness trait. A trait that would best suit your for…GRYFINNDOR!”

Silence gave way to roaring applause as nearly everyone stood at the Gryffindor table. Surprisingly, the loudest cheers came from his own brother, James. Albus barely waited till the hat was off his head to go join the other Gryffindor first years. But first, he had something he needed to do.

"Way to go, Albus!" James congratulated him as Albus approached him. "I guess you _did_ have to guts to be a Gryffindor."

Albus gave his brother a toothy smile, and then completed his first act as a "gutsy" Gryffindor.

"OW!" James shouted as both his hands covered the back of his head, "ALBUS! Why'd you hit me?"

"YOU DROVE ME MAD FOR ALMOST TWO MONTHS THINKING I WOULD GET SORTED INTO SLYTHERIN!"

"Take it easy, Albus! It was a joke!" James tried to defend both himself and his newly aching head. "I never _really_ thought you'd be in Slytherin! Hufflepuff, at worst, but not Slytherin!"

But it hardly mattered to Albus what James said now. He was in Gryffindor, and nothing anyone did could change that. Satisfied, his took his seat among the vastly impressed first years.

"Wow!" breathed Elle Peakes, the blonde girl who had been in the boat with him.

Albus sighed and took a deep breath as he watched a pair of identical twins named Pucey, Cecilia and Pucey, Claudia each get sorted into Slytherin, a fate he was happy to avoid.

Feeling as though a giant weight had been lifted off his shoulders, Albus was finally able to relax and enjoy the ceremony. The only names he found himself paying attention to were the ones who were sorted into Gryffindor: girl named Bailey Reynolds with dark hair and a cute smile, a boy named Riley St. John who seemed to strut over to the Gryffindor table, and the dark haired boy from the boat, who he learned was named Damien Towler.

In fact, it didn't even seem that long before the most important name of all was called.

“Weasley, Rose.”

Rose practically skipped up to the stool and spun in a circle as she sat down. The hat completely covered the top half of her face, but her confidant smile was still clearly visible.

“RAVENCLAW!”

The second that fateful word was spoken, Rose’s face went instantly white. Albus’ eyes bulged and an audible gasp was heard from every Weasley at the Gryffindor table. There were even a few surprised looks on a few of the teachers, including Professor Longbottom. Here, the first born child of Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger, Gryffindor leaders in the second war against the Dark Lord, had just been sorted into _Ravenclaw_. There was a loud eruption of applause from the Ravenclaw table, but once the clapping died down, the Great Hall was silent and Rose still hadn’t moved.

“Um, Miss Weasley,” said Professor Longbottom, gently lifting the hat off her head, “you can go sit with your house now.”

“B-but-“

“Other students still need to be sorted.”

Rose nodded weakly as she slid off the stool and made her way to the Ravenclaw table with her head down.

There hardly seemed to be a point in watching the ceremony now. Albus didn’t know any of the kids that were left to be sorted, but he most certainly didn’t want to think about Rose right now. So, he watched quietly as Whitby, Ben became a Hufflepuff; and a small girl named Xiao, Luli go into Ravenclaw. Finally, Zabini, Juliet was sorted into Slytherin, and the ceremony was over. Professor Longbottom snapped the scroll, which rolled up like a window shade and took the sorting hat away.

“And now,” Professor Flitwick announced, having to stand on the actual table as he did so, “the feast may begin."

Albus had been looking forward to the feast for hours, but now it seemed so frightening. Talking to all these new kids who would supposedly become his closest friends now seemed like a horribly daunting task to take on by himself. He was tempted to pick up his plate and move next to James.

“-swore my dad would have a heart attack right there,” a boy named Leo Edmin was telling everyone, “My mum’s a squib and she never even told him there was a chance I could be born with magic.”

“Same here,” replied a Muggle-born named Gavin, “No one in my family has ever shown a shred of magic before me. They all sell insurance.”

“Don’t worry,” an older boy told them, “Nobody comes here an expert in magic. You’ll all do fine. Maddox Dugan, nice to meet all of you new Gryffindors.”

“Say, a Professor Dugan came to my house to deliver my letter,” said Gavin, “Are you related to him?”

“Yes, he’s my father.”

“The teachers have kids?” exclaimed the pale brown haired girl, whom Albus learned was named Maeve Finnigan.

But to be honest, the idea of the teachers having families shocked Albus too. Until then, he thought of the Hogwarts teachers as teaching in their classrooms during the day, and falling asleep under their desks at night.

“Yeah,” laughed Maddox, ruffling Maeve’s hair, much to her apparent annoyance. “Contrary to popular belief, the teachers _are_ allowed to have lives outside these walls.”

“But wait,” the girl named Ruby Paddock interrupted, confused. “Isn’t your dad the head of Ravenclaw House?”

“Yeah, he practically fell off his chair three years ago when I was sorted into Gryffindor. But it’s the best house in the school, am I right?”

Ravenclaw. Albus was suddenly reminded of Rose’s situation all over again. Across the Great Hall, he saw Rose hadn’t touched any of the food the Ravenclaw prefects had piled onto her plate. While the other new Ravenclaw students gossiped and laughed like old friends, Rose kept her head cast down, kicking her feet against the stone floor. Albus felt so bad for her. He knew that getting sorted into Ravenclaw meant you were smart, so it was hardly an insult. It just didn’t seem fair for Albus to be in Gryffindor when he was sure he just barely made the cut, and for Rose to be have not when her family line was Gryffindor all the way back to the school’s founding.

Albus had barely eaten a thing, but all the food disappeared before his eyes. It didn’t matter anyway. What he did eat sat like a heavy stone in his stomach. Once the food was gone, Professor Flitwick stood on the table once again, a few new students snickering as he did so.

“Before we all go off to bed,” he announced in a voice that squeaked occasionally, “I would like to make some start-of-term announcements."

The older students fell quiet and began to listen intently. It wasn’t long before the first years, even the ones who were laughing followed suit.

“All first years should know that the forest off the school grounds is not to be entered for any reason. We did not name it the Forbidden Forest because we thought the name was 'cool'.”

A few older students did laugh at that remark. Apparently at Hogwarts, you had to pay very close attention not to just what the teachers were saying, but how they said it too.

“Our caretaker, Mr. Filch, has also asked me to remind you there will be no using magic in the corridors between classes, and any objects purchased from Weasley Wizard Wheezes are strictly forbidden.”

James, Fred, and Roxanne all laughed at that remark. They were Weasley’s number one sales distributors outside Diagon Alley, and they weren’t going to let something as minor as Mr. Filch stand in the way of their ten percent cut.

“Quidditch trials will be held next week. Anyone who is interested, please contact Madame Wood.”

“That being said,” he finished, “let us all head off to bed, and be ready for a full day of learning tomorrow!”

None of the students seemed to need anymore convincing than that. Victoire stood up and instructed all the Gryffindor first years to follow her. Albus watched as one of the older Ravenclaw prefects did the saw with the student to their right. The two houses walked side by side for a while; the entire time, Albus tried to wave at Rose and get her attention, but Rose kept her head down and shuffled her feet, just like she had been doing ever since she’d been sorted. At the staircase, the Gryffindors went up and the Ravenclaws went down, parting ways for the rest of the night.

The stairs went up and up and up again, as though they would never end. The students began to pant and yawn, their exhaustion growing greater with every step. The figures in the painting waves and greeted them, but the new Gryffindors were all much too tired to even notice. In an instant, Victoire stopped very suddenly, causing about four students to run into her back. Albus peered out from his spot in the middle of the line to see the famed painting of the Fat Lady, waiting for them.

“Password?” the Fat Lady asked Victoire.

“ _Novus militia._ ” Victoire stated clearly.

The painting moved to reveal an opening in the wall. Many of the smaller students needed help getting in.

Victoire led the first year students into the common room, draped in red velvet with squashy red furniture scattered across the floor. She pointed up on corridor telling the boys to go to their left and the girls to go to their right. Albus walked backwards on his way up the stairs, watching his cousin pull a letter out of her robes and take a seat in one of the armchair as a faint blush crept over her cheeks.

Waiting for them at the top of the stairs, were the four-post beds with their thick velvet curtains, just as Albus had heard them described so many times. The two Muggle-bred boys, Leo Edwin and Gavin Foss were fascinated by the smallest details of the dormitory, from the fireplace in the center of the room, to the floor level windows with their fantastic view of the lake.

While the other exhausted boys got ready for bed, Albus took a seat at one of the windows. He could see the lake, the mountains, the forests, and every part of the castle except for the one part he really cared about tonight.

“Do any of you know if you can see Ravenclaw tower from here?” he asked suddenly

“I don’t know,” answered a boy named Simon Henry. “Why do you care anyway?”

“My cousin’s a Ravenclaw. If I can see her tower and she can see mine, then we’d be able to wave to each other.”

“Your cousin,” Simon said. “She isn’t that Weasley girl who burst into tears because she wasn’t good enough for Gryffindor, is she?”

“Shut up, Henry!” shouted Damien, glaring at him straight in the eyes.

“Make me, Towler!”

“Quiet up there,” an older student shouted from the bottom of the stairs, “And lights out!”

Simon and Damien cast one final glare at each other before they made their way to their four post beds. Albus didn’t move from the window, even after the lights and the fire had gone out. In fact, he stayed up later than he ever had before in his life. The sky was especially clear tonight, and there was a full moon, casting a vast amount of light on the school grounds.

“Good-night, Rose,” he whispered out into the vast night air.

 


	3. Chapter 3 Insults, Infestation, and Influence

 

  
Chapter 3  
Insults, Infestation, and Influence

  
 “Are you going to finish that?”

 “Huh?”

 “Your sausages,” Maeve repeated, pointing to Albus’ plate. “Are you going to finish them?”

 Albus shook his head, and Maeve snatched the plate, waiting for no further invitation, and scampered back to her previous seat between Joanne and Ruby. At the other end of the table, Albus watched all the other new Gryffindors converse and share food off each others plates as though they had been friends their whole lives. There was a noticeable gap separating them from where Albus sat and his fellow classmates. He had heard the older students whisper and even try to encourage him to sit with the other first years, but Albus didn’t need anyone else to tell him he wasn’t mixing well with his housemates.

 Albus tried as hard as he could to get along with the other boys in Gryffindor, but it wasn’t very long before Albus could find something about every single one of them that he disliked enough to keep from being friends with them. Leo Edwin talked too much, while Damien Towler barely talked at all. Gavin Foss, the Muggle-born boy would ask questions before you could answer them. Riley St. John was never out of the company of the Gryffindor girls, who all seemed to speak in another language made up entirely of giggles. And after the incident their first night at Gryffindor Tower, he didn’t need anyone to tell him that Simon Henry was an arrogant little prat.

 Albus turned his attention back to his copy of Standard Book of Spells. He wanted to reread last night’s homework before he had to go to Transfiguration. At least his classes proved to be a distraction from all these worries.

Astronomy was an interesting, if not tedious, class. The students would be kept up well past midnight looking through their telescopes at the beauty of the heavens, and give themselves migraines trying to read and create the star charts for their homework. The real reason most of the student liked Astronomy was because of the ability to walk the halls of Hogwarts late at night with Filch being unable to do anything about it. They were the kings of the school. That joyous feeling would last until the next morning, when they had to wake up and drag themselves groggily till their next class.

 But the Gryffindor students always found themselves able to catch up on their sleep in History of Magic. The infamous ghost, Professor Binns, taught the class, and he was just as terrible as his brother and parents had told him That monotone drone could put the entire class to sleep in a matter of minutes. Those who did manage to stay awake reported that Professor Binns didn’t even seem to care.

 Herbology was shockingly the most exciting class at Hogwarts, and Professor Longbottom was seen as a living hero in the eyes of the Gryffindors. Everyday lessons about the more mundane plants and fungi were peppered with war stories about duels, dark wizards, and Professor Longbottom beheading a giant snake with the sword of Gryffindor. Never had any students in Hogwarts history so looked forward to a lecture on the sedative properties of oleander venom.

The rest of the classes went by for the next few weeks with more or less excitement. With all the time spend, on what the teachers liked to call "the basics", it seemed like they would never get to learn any real magic. And he got to know a lot of the other students. Well, more like he got to know their houses as a whole.

Charms class was taught by the head of Hufflepuff house, Professor Branstone, a woman who was one of the school’s younger teachers, and who also seemed to be the school’s firmest believer in covering the basics…again, and again, and again. The entire first month was completely devoted to how to hold the wand correctly, how to move the wand correctly, and all the ways you could poke your eye out with your own wand. The Hufflepuff students that shared their class were only more than happy with the classroom situation and worked as hard as they possibly could to get the movement down perfectly, right down to having their pinkies at the right angle; while the Gryffindor students, on the other hand, became more and more impatient, eager to make their classmates float, make chairs dance across the room, and everything else they had seen the older students show off.

One day, Leo made the mistake of asking when they were going to be using real magic. The question earned a collective gasp from the Hufflepuff students, and a lecture from Professor Branstone.

“Mr. Edwin, do you know what will happen if I neglect to provide you with a strong foundation in magical technique?”

She paused as though she actually expected Leo to answer her. Slowly, he shook his head no.

“Well,” she went on to explain, “you will be considerably behind other young witches and wizards you age. Your education will progressively become more and more impossible to keep up with, you will fail every major examination both at Hogwarts and in your later careers, and you will end up sweeping the streets in Diagon Alley. Is that what you want, Mr. Edwin?”

This time, every student in Gryffindor shook their head no. The Hufflepuff students took turns flashing the Head of their House with proud, triumphant smiles.

“Good,” Professor Branstone smiled, turning back to her notes. “Now, back to the lesson. When holding your wand during a levitation spell, you must always remember…”

Professor Dugan, the Transfiguration teacher, however, seemed to operate his class on a completely different playing field. There was no such thing as moving along in a lesson too fast, you could always ask a classmate for help later. If you didn’t understand what the lecture was about, it was because you didn’t comprehend the text well enough and now you were holding back the class. Questions were encouraged, but you had to make sure it wasn’t a question that would waste time. In short, going from Charms class to Transfiguration was like going from zero to sixty on his dad’s old Firebolt.

The Ravenclaw students had no problem keeping up with this pace. Even Rose, who was still as glum as even, had no problem transfiguring her leaf into a piece of paper. Albus also noticed that most of the other Ravenclaw girls had formed themselves into a clique that Rose was clearly not a part of. In fact, in the corridors, as Rose walked past the little gaggle of about four girls, he heard them gossiping about her.

“That girl never talks to anyone, Freya,” a girl with long red hair snorted haughtily, addressing a girl who seemed to emit the air of being a leader.

“You don’t have to tell me, Faline,” said a brunette girl to her left, crossing her arms and shaking her head. “She has the bed right next to mine. Our first night as Hogwarts, I offered her some of those Bertie Bott’s beans from the train, and she just turns over in bed and pulls the covers over her head.”

“I’m not surprised, Gina,” the girl named Freya said. “My dad went to school with her mother and told me she was always a snotty know-it-all who was too good for anyone in any house other than Gryffindor. Being raised by that woman, what would you expect?”

Albus heard a very distinct sniff come from his cousin, and watched her pace quicken as she ran out into the courtyard. The Ravenclaw girls giggled and made their way in the opposite direction. As the leader girl, Freya, brushed past him, Albus felt his blood begin to boil. What right did any of them have to talk about a member of his family that way? And if Rose was still upset, they certainly weren’t helping to remedy the situation. Albus wanted desperately to take off after those girls and say some words that would get him detention for a month. But while he stood, nearly shaking in rage, the Ravenclaw gang had disappeared up the changing staircases, and Rose was long gone too.  
 

*****

  
 One day, in Defense Against the Dark Arts, a class that might have also been dismissed as a bore along with all the others, took on an entirely new dimension. Albus knew from his dad that the Defense Against the Dark Arts used to be the class that everyone was obsessed with, mostly because it was believed that the position was cursed. Every year for his dad’s time at Hogwarts, there would be a new teacher. A good wizard turned slave to Voldemort, a famous pretty-boy author who turned out to be a fraud, a werewolf who later became Teddy’s father, a Death Eater in disguise, a spy from the Ministry who tortured the students, and then the infamous Severus Snape for whom he was named all took their turns as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.

 But ever since Voldemort had been killed, the rumors of the curse had lifted, and the current professor had been at Hogwarts since Teddy was a first year. Professor Patil was an intelligent woman who took her subject seriously. It was well know that she was a veteran of the Second War, just like Professor Longbottom, but she never told war stories in her class. It seemed strange, because surely the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher would be the one who would have the best ones. But Professor Patil was quiet about her days as a student, and even seemed to become very sad talking about something as simple as her own days as a student of Defensive magic. And the entire class learned why in a very unexpected way.

It had actually happened quiet innocently to begin with. While Professor Patil was taking a break from her lector to take questions, Gavin made the mistake of pointing out a scarlet and gold scarf that hung from one corner of the blackboard, covered in dust and colors faded by the years.

 “What’s that, Professor Patil,” he asked after she had called on him. “Did that belong to you when you went to school here?”

 For a long time, Professor Patil didn’t say a word. And the students, in turn, remained silent while they waited for her answer. When tears started to well in her eyes, everyone knew that Gavin had crossed some sort of invisible line. Professor Patil turned her back to class and began to walk away. As she did so, everyone gave Gavin an evil glare, even though none of them knew what he did wrong.

 “No, Mr. Foss. This wasn’t my scarf.”

 She walked back towards the blackboard and gingerly lifted the scarf from its perch. She walked back to the front of the class, holding the scarf gently, not even shaking the dust from it.

 “It belonged to my sister, Parvati,” she told the class, obviously trying to keep her voice from catching. “She was killed, fighting the Battle of Hogwarts that happened right here.”

 The whole class became very silent. Quills stopped scratching, the whispers came to an abrupt end, and all eyes fell on Professor Patil.

 “When we were younger, we both fought, side by side, in the resistance here at the school. I always thought she was so much braver than me. If anyone deserved to belong to the house of Gryffindor, it was her.”

 “So many people died that day. So many dear, dear friends that I have never stopped thinking about since.”

 This was a side of the war the students weren’t used to hearing. Of course, it was a war, and they had known that <i>some</i> people died, but a face had never been attached to that concept before. A living, hurting human being who was standing right in front of them. Professor Patil, noticing the new faces of her students, quickly changed the pace of the lecture.

 “But don’t you all understand? That is exactly why Defense Against the Dark Arts is so important! It is why I choose to teach this very subject. I wanted to see with my own eyes that the future generation will be ready to stand and fight should another great evil come again; to teach you all how to do that has become my life’s work.

 “I suppose that is why I keep Parvati’s scarf here,” she finished, walking back to the board, and carefully, lovingly, hanging the scarf back in its place. “To remind me of that.”

 At this point, most of the girls in the class were rubbing at their eyes as silent tears poured out. It was also pretty clear that a lot of the boys were trying to hold in some emotions.

 “And I also hope, whenever you see Parvati’s scarf, it will remind all of you of that.”

 There was a silent murmur of agreement among the entire class.  
 “Well,” gasped Professor Patil, wiping her eyes one last time, “We are just about out of time. Class dismissed.”

 Professor Patil actually left the classroom before any of her students did that day. It was a good ten minutes before the first student dared to rise out of her seat. A few others followed, including Albus, but much of the class stayed behind to get an early start on the night’s homework.

  
*****

  
 “Are you sure won’t have anymore rock cakes?” Hagrid asked, sliding the plate over to Albus.

 Albus shook his, feeling he had already cracked three teeth on Hagrid’s treats. He took a sip of tea, gripping his jaw as he felt the sting.

 Friday afternoon tea had apparently become something of a family tradition, although it was only Fred and James who came along with Albus today. Though they were more than enough company, showing off some of their newer products they had gotten from Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes. As though Hagrid would actually buy a Projectile Vomit Retainer!

 “Where is Roxanne today?” Hagrid asked, taking the plate back and grabbing a cake for himself.

 “She and the other Chasers called an extra practice,” Fred explained, still dunking his first rock cake in his tea. “Personally, I think they’re just braiding each other’s hair or trying on shoes or something.”

 Hagrid chuckled and took a bite of the cake.

 “But what about young Rose?”

 “She’s…um…sick,” Albus lied.

 “She is NOT,” James argued. “Rose has been throwing a temper tantrum ever since she got here just because she wasn’t sorted into Gryffindor!”

 “It’s pathetic,” Fred agreed soberly.

 Albus glared at the two of them. He couldn’t stand to here them making fun of Rose like that. What were they doing to make her feel better?

 “It looks like young Albus here is not in the best of mood either,” Hagrid offered.

 At that comment, Albus stared back into his teacup. The last thing he needed right now was for Fred and James to redirect their energies towards him.

 “Yes, what could be so wrong in my younger brother’s life to cause this horrific expression?” said James, adopting a dramatic woe to his voice as he hugged his brother around the shoulders.

 “I do not know, Mr. Potter,” answered Fred with the same level of dramatics, as he reached into the pocket of Albus’ robes. “Could it be that this may hold a clue?”

 “Hey!” shouted Albus as he watched Fred open his folded class schedule.

 “I do not know, Mr. Weasley,” answered James, keeping his ironclad grip around Albus’ frame. “Why don’t you tell me?”

 “Give that back!” Albus struggle, trying to pry himself away from his brother.

 “Yikes!” exclaimed Fred, passing the schedule to James. “Look at what they’re torturing your little brother with today!”

 “Double Potions with Slytherin!” James shouted dramatically, holding the paper just out of Albus’ reach. “Taught by the infamous, the terrible Professor Katrina “Hardass” Vhartan!”

“We should just take him out in back of the school and put him out of his misery right now!” Fred suggested

 “Give me that!” Albus jumped at his brother, snatching the schedule back.

 “And you two be careful about what you say about Professor Vhartan,” Hagrid warned. “Don’t forget that I’m a professor too, one of yours. I’m sure ye don’t want me to take away any points from Gryffindor for that little comment.”

 “Speaking of which,” Albus huffed, hoisting his book bag over his shoulder, “I have to get to Professor Vhartan’s class before she gives me detention for being late.”

 And without another word, Albus stormed out the door and into the damp fog. As he made a sharp turn against the huts outer wall, his foot kicked against a large crate the growled and jumped at him. As he watched the crate continue to shake and snarl, he smiled at the thought of what James and Fred would be facing in their upcoming Care of Magical Creatures class.

The fog on the way back to the castle was so thick that if Albus hadn’t spent the last month memorizing the school grounds, he would have surely wandered into the lake. Behind him, he heard two sets of running footsteps, and it wasn’t long before he was certain that Fred and James were following behind him.

 “Oh, c’mon, Albus!” James shouted while gasping for breath. “You know Fred and I were just playing around.”

 But Albus kept on walking and refused to turn around. He felt like letting his older brother dangle for a little while longer. Maybe even if he wasn’t exactly friends with the other Gryffindors, hanging around the school’s boldest kids was starting to have an effect on him.

 “Albus!” James shouted, not more than a few feet behind him. “Say something to let me know that you and I are okay!”

 Albus smirked, knowing exactly what he was going to say. “Do you remember those special dragon hide gloves that Uncle Charlie sent you for Christmas this year? The ones made from the Ukrainian Ironbelly?”

 James and Fred nodded, unsure for where this conversation was going.

 “Well, make sure you bring them to Hagrid’s class today.”

 He didn’t even try to suppress his joy as expressions of fear and dread consumed his brother and cousin.

  
*****

  
 If there was one thing he could say about James and Fred, at least they weren’t lying about this particular subject. Professor Vhartan was the most difficult Potions Master that Hogwarts had even seen, apparently a title that carried a lot of weigh.

 Professor Vhartan was a tall, intimidating woman with piecing eyes and a booming voice. From what Albus could tell, she hated the world and everyone it. On the first day of class, Riley was caught passing a note, but instead of simply giving him detention or taking away points from Gryffindor, she made him walk to the front of the class, stand on his head, and sing “I’m a Little Teapot” until his face turned purple. And as soon as he collapsed, then she gave him detention and took twenty points from Gryffindor.

 The only thing in the world that Professor Vhartan did seem to like was potion. And for Potions class that day, they would be brewing a draft to make finger nails grow three inches with one application. The way she described the process of measuring and boiling down the ingredients was almost poetic. But then she seemed to remember her audience and reverted back to her usual manner.

 “For this class, you will be split into pairs…that I will be choosing,” Professor Vhartan added when she noticed the glimmer of happiness in her students’ eyes.

 “Mr. Edwin, you will be paired with Mr. Goyle,” she announced, picking random student out from the opposite side of the room. “Miss Paddock, you will be with Miss Karamanlis…”

 “Miss Ackhart and Miss Canning will be with Misses Cecilia and Claudia Pucey,” Professor Vhartan scanned the classroom, looking for anyone she might have missed. “And Mr. Potter will work with Mr. Malfoy.”

 The students sat dumbstruck as they slowly began to realize that every Gryffindor student had been paired with a Slytherin. Was Professor Vhartan some kind off sadist? Did she enjoy watching her students suffer before her very eyes?

 “Well, you have your assignments. Now get to work!”

 Immediately, the students raced to gather their books and supplies, trying to figure out who would move and who would stay. A large Slytherin boy named Oscar Goyle knocked Ruby to the ground as he dashed towards Leo’s table. Albus watched Scorpius roll his eyes and mutter something about an “ogre wearing robes” before he gathered up his supplies and moved to the empty seat next to him. Albus felt somewhat luckier than his Gryffindor peers. At least <i>his</i> Potions partner was someone he knew.

 “Some day, isn’t it?” remarked Albus, the current situation in which the student from houses sharing a thousand year rivalry were now being force to work together without killing each other.

 “My dad said when he was in school, the Potions Master at least favored the Slytherins,” Scorpius replied, glaring at Professor Vhartan as she bent over to examine Maeve’s unevenly sliced tubeworms. “Those days are long gone!”

 Albus nodded as he stirred his own tubeworms into the cauldron.

 “I saw your cousin this morning in Charms,” he told him has he set up the scales.

 “You did?” Albus gasped, nearly dropping his knife.

 “What’s wrong with her?” Scorpius asked, raising an eyebrow. “She’s moping around like someone canceled Christmas.”

 “Yeah,” Albus told him, glancing at the next step for the potion. “She’s disappointed because she didn’t get sorted into Gryffindor with the rest of the family. Is she still really bad?”

 “I wouldn’t know,” Scorpius answered, beginning to stir the potion counter clockwise. “She had her head down for the whole class, even when we were supposed to be practicing wand movements. She lucky Professor Branstone didn’t call on her to read!”

 “Blimey,” gasped Albus, shocked at what he heard. “I knew Rose was upset about not making Gryffindor, but I was certain she would have gotten over it by now.”

 “Well, she hasn’t,” Scorpius replied shortly. “Are you done with those root peelings yet?”

 Albus slid his tray over towards the scales, and hung his head.

 “I’m sure Uncle Ron was just kidding about disinheriting her if she didn’t make Gryffindor,” Albus went on, “and Aunt Hermione is so smart, she was almost sorted into Ravenclaw herself-”

 “Will you stop going on about that Mudblood?” Scorpius groaned in exasperation. “Isn’t it bad enough I have to hear my father go on about her when I at home?”

 Albus felt himself freeze as Scorpius continued with his measurement as though he had said something as innocent as it was foggy outside. Albus himself had only heard the word “Mudblood” used a couple times, mostly from his Aunt Hermione, who seemed to use the word in a joking matter, but he knew it was a horrible word. He had called Lily that once when she broke his Victor Krum action figure and his mother had sent him to bed without dessert for a month. What could possibly be going through Scorpius’ head that he thought it was okay to say that word about a member of his family?

 “Professor Vhartan,” Elle raised her hand from the back of the classroom.

 “And what is wrong with you, Miss. Peakes?”

 “There are about seven little bug things eating my nettles.”

 “Miss. Peakes, what kind of witch do you expect to be if you can’t even use proper names? Those ‘bug things’ are called Chizpurfles.”

 “Okay,” Elle tried again. “Professor Vhartan, there are about seven ‘Chizpurfles’ eating my nettles and…now my nettles are all gone.”

 “And now there are about seven hundred more crawling all over the floor.” added her Potions partner, Phoebe Nott.

 Albus watched Scorpius look down towards the floor and his eyes fill with horror. As he cast his own eyes down, sure enough, he saw what was quickly filling the rest of the class with fear. The floor was covered with what appeared to be a thick, moving carpet; a carpet that was slowly climbing up the legs of the chair, onto the tables, and into the cauldrons and over the potions ingredients.

 Albus jumped up to stand on his chair, just like much of the class had already done. Albus learned pretty much everything there was to know about Chipurfles three years ago when his Grandma Weasley had a horrible infestation at her house. By the time they had all been killed, his grandmother’s potion stores were completely gone and her cauldron nearly destroyed. He also knew the students had a lot to worry about because one of the things Chipurfles frequently went after was the cores of magic wands.

 “Alright,” shouted Professor Vhartan, clearly in as much as state of worry as her students, “don’t panic, children!”

 “THEY’RE ON MY WAND! THEY’RE ON MY WAND!” screamed Thalia Karamanlis, shaking the infested rod in every direction she could.

 Many of the students had climbed onto their tabletops, but at this point, there was no escape. There was no where in the room that was not covered with these horrid black bugs. The dungeon classroom became filled with the screams of girls and boys alike, and Professor Vhartan disappear into the potion storage, leading many of the students to believe that it had come to the point where it was every man for himself.

 But even in the face of disaster, Albus could not forget the sting of the word Scorpius had said before. He had been stewing over Rose’s problems ever since they had come to school. The last thing she or Albus needed at this point in time, was for this pureblood prat to attach such an insulting word to their family name.

Scorpius had clearly forgotten, his mind now occupied with shaking the Chizpurfles from his robes and holding his wand high above his head and out of their reach. Before he truly understood what he was doing, Albus reached down into the swarm, picking up an entire handful of the crawling insects and tossed them at Scorpius’ midsection.

 “AHHH!” Scorpius screamed, shaking franticly at his robes, trying to get rid of the insects that clung to him. “WHAT WAS THAT FOR, POTTER?”

 But Albus didn’t listen. He simply picked up another handful and threw, this time aiming for Scorpius’ face. This time, however, he had the good sense to duck. Realizing that this was war, Scorpius reached down, cringing as the bugs squirmed against his skin, and landed a direct hit right on Albus’ chest.

 With that final action, Albus lunged at Scorpius and tackled him down to the hard stone floor. The two boys rolled across the ground, alternated between throwing punches and throwing handfuls of bugs. The other students were so preoccupied with their own fear of the Chipurfles, the either didn’t notice the fight or didn’t care.

 In the heat of the fight, Professor Vhartan reappeared with a glass vile containing some violet, hissing potion. Before many of the students could look up, she threw it has hard as she could towards the ceiling and extended her wand.

 “<i>Medicamentum depluit</i>!” she shouted.

 A jagged yellow light shot at the flying vial with perfect accuracy, causing it to shatter and the potion to fall to every corner of the room as a type of misty rain. The screams of the students were soon replaced with a loud sizzling sound as the hundreds of hundreds of Chizpurfles began to dissolve where they stood. Within minutes, the potion had taken its full effect and all evidence of the previous infestation had disappeared.

 The students stood frozen at all corners of the room, completely dumbstruck. Professor Vhartan seemed equally at a loss for what to do next. Clearly, all her years of study had not prepared her for this. She didn’t even asked Albus or Scorpius why they were sprawled out on the floor when she had come out.

 “Class…is…,” she struggled with her words. “Oh, just everyone go!”

 The students needed no further prompting than that. Gathering up their school supplies, making thorough checks to make sure none of the little invaders has sought refuge in their school books, they slowly made their way out the door. As Scorpius exited the door right after Albus, he met him with one final glare and then ran ahead to join the other Slytherin boys, who must have been in the middle of a very funny joke.

 Well, that was just fine with him, Albus thought to himself as he too stormed off. He could not believe he ever thought there was a possibility that the Malfoy boy could be nice!

  
*****

  
 Later that night, in the Gryffindor Common Room, things had taken on a much more relaxed atmosphere. Students sat at the tables doing their homework, gossiping and sipping butterbeers in front of the fireplace, and even Victoire was relaxed, sitting in her favorite armchair, reading yet another letter that made her blush.

 Albus sat on one of the sofas between two sixth-year girls, each reading a very complicated looking textbook for N.E.W.T. level Charms. Albus himself was certain he had been sitting there longer than the both of them combined. He had finished his reading for both Transfiguration and Potions, and an essay for Defense Against the Dark Arts. He just finished a series of questions for Charms class, and was moving on to start a composition for History, when he heard a loud voice coming from behind him.

 “Hey, little Potter,” Maddox hopped over the back of the couch and put his arm around his shoulder like an old friend. “I heard about what happened in first year Potions today. I hope you enjoy you afternoon off, because normally it takes an act of God for Professor Hardass to call off class.”

 “Yeah,” Albus answered, stilling scrawling away on his History composition, not looking up. “How did you find out about that?”

 “Oh, Vhartan teaches the fourth years next, and I was already on my way down when I got the news,” Maddox told with a smile as big as could possibly be. “I swear I saw a Gryffindor and a Slytherin hug each other when we heard.

 If Maddox had been talking to anyone else, Albus was sure an ecstatic conversation would have erupted. But Albus knew he was in no mood to carry on with this.

 “But enough about all that,” Maddox changed the subject, “How else goes the life of the young Mr. Potter?”

 Now, that was just about the <i>last</i> thing Albus wanted to talk about. He had been doing nothing <i>but</i> think about his life and lives of everyone he knew. It just seemed easier not to say anything at all. 

Maddox must have noticed from the way Albus’ head sank slowly and refused to answer.

 “I’m guessing less than perfect?” Maddox offered.

 “I don’t know,” Albus finally told him. “I guess things just aren’t going the way I thought they would.”

 “How so?”

 Slowly, Albus began to tell Maddox about all that had been dwelling on his mind: his worries about Rose, not having any real friends among the Gryffindor first-years, the gang of Ravenclaw girls who tormented Rose rather than try to make her feel at home in her house, and even the horrible word that Scorpius Malfoy had called his aunt. The more Albus spoke, the more he began to unveil about all his concealed disappointment about what school had turned out to be.

 At that, Maddox offered a kind, almost knowing smile; the type of look Albus almost never saw from his own older brother.

 “Well, you know,” Maddox began, “sometimes you build something up so much in your head that it can never amount to the real thing. Even something as wonderful as Hogwarts.”

 Albus had to acknowledge the truth in those words. He had been hearing nothing but exciting stories about Hogwarts ever since he was old enough to understand what the word meant.

 “I mean, look at where your own dad was coming from,” Maddox continued, “We’ve all heard of the horrid, horrible Dursleys. I’ll bet your dad would have been happy to leave he had gotten a mandatory enlistment from the British Navy!”

 Albus laughed; that was probably true! He had heard about how awful the Dursleys were too. Eleven years worth of bedtime stories, he had heard.

 “But don’t you worry, Little Potter,” Maddox assured him. “It gets a lot easier from this point on.”

 Albus smiled and nodded his head. It was easy to believe the words Maddox said. A part of him <i>had</i> to believe what Maddox said.

 “How was your school day?” Albus asked, feeling lighter spirits, and a new confidence in the older, Gryffindor student.

 “Oh, alright,” Maddox responded with a growing smile, “But between you and me, your brother might have a little trouble catching the Snitch for the next couple of weeks!”

 Albus laughed, starting to feel a little better already.  



	4. Chapter 4 The Ravenclaw Passageways

  
Chapter 4The Ravenclaw Passageways

  
“Mail’s here! Mail’s here!” shouted Bailey from across the table as she jumped up onto her seat.

 Albus looked up from his breakfast plate to see the dozens upon dozens of owls flock into the Great hall and the packages they were carrying fall to the tables. All around the Gryffindor table, students jumped up and cheered as the swarm of owls dropped letters and parcels to their owners. To his left, he watched Leo get a package of some type of Muggle candy, Damien get a very lumpy package wrapped in brown paper, and Maeve get about eight different letters tied together with twine.

 “So they really have just one man whose job it is to deliver all the mail everyday?” Albus turned to his left and asked Gavin as more packages fell to the Gryffindor table.

 “Sure,” Gavin told him as he stirred honey into his porridge. “He’s called a mailman. He goes to every house in town, collects the mail, and then he comes back and brings everyone their mail.”

 “Blimey!”

 Ever since Albus had his talk with Maddox, things seemed to be going a little bit better. He had even made friends with a few of the other Gryffindors. Not with Simon Henry, of course, but he talked to Leo and helped him with his Charms homework a few nights ago, the night after that, Damien helped him with his Transfiguration essay, and now he had started having breakfast with Gavin. The girls had even seemed to start speaking in English, and invited him to play Gobstones just last night.

 Blythe, Albus’ Barn owl, swooped down over his head, dropping an envelope onto his plate before perching on the edge of the table. Albus smiled and snuck her a small bit of sausage before tearing the envelope open.

<i>  
Dear Albus,

 Congratulation on making Gryffindor! The whole family is so proud of you. And between you and me, your father was more excited than anyone else. Your father’s work has been pretty quiet lately and has actually been home in time for dinner this entire week. I have been working on my Quidditch reports, as usual, and following the records of the Falmouth Falcons for James and Puddlemere United for you. Puddlemere is actually going to be having a game during your Easter break, and it wouldn’t take very much for me to get press box tickets for the whole family!</i>

  
 Albus felt an ever-growing smile on his face. His mother knew that Puddlemere United was his absolute favorite Quidditch team. He even had an autographed team poster in his room back home because his mum and dad knew the couch, Oliver Wood.

<i>  
Lily is adjusting to being the only child in the house. And despite the fact that she helps herself to extra dessert and has moved all her dolls into your room, she tells me everyday that she misses you. And she still wants to go to Hogwarts RIGHT NOW!

So far, you father and I have gotten no letter from the school or from Dominique, so we can assume you haven’t gotten into trouble yet. That already gives you a better school record than your brother, and possibly even your father and I!

I hope all of you classes are going well. Did you make sure to give our love to Neville? And don’t let what your brother says influence you to much. We don’t expect you to go up and hug him right in the middle of Herbology class in front of all you new friends. Just let him know that your father and I have him in our thoughts. And I hear you also have Eleanor Branstone and Padma Patil for professors too. You know, your father and I went to school with those two has well. In fact, if you and Rose want to see something funny at Christmas, all you have to do ask Uncle Ron about Professor Patil and the Yule Ball. He’ll know what it means, and his face will turn that funny shade of red.

Love always,  
 Mum

P.S. I’ll see what I can do about getting Lily to move her dolls out of your room before Christmas.</i>

  
 Albus sighed. He was happy to hear from his family, but it only made him think about Rose. They had been attending Hogwarts for almost two month, and Rose had yet to make a single friend. Albus himself had formed a few casual friendships with his fellow Gryffindors, but Rose hadn’t even accomplished that yet. Even the other members of the family had begun to notice something was wrong.

 “You know, Albus, I’m good friends with Justine Grant, one of the Ravenclaw Prefects,” Victoire told him one evening in the Common Room. “If you want, I can ask her to keep an eye on Rose, see what we can do to help.”

 However, Albus was not sure he trusted the other Ravenclaw girls to help his cousin. He remembered to horrid first year girl who Rose had to share her room with every night. How much would <i>they</i> be willing to help? Yes, there did not seem to be anything that anyone in the family could do. Not with every one Rose cared about being in Gryffindor house.

 Suddenly, Albus felt a gust of wind brush on her hair. He looked up to see Giuseppe, the Boreal owl that belonged to his Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione. Albus groaned and shook his head. Last summer, when Giuseppe delivered a letter to their family about when to meet at King’s Cross, he and James had gotten the idea that it would be funny to feed it a Bertie Bott’s Bean while their mother was in the other room. Unfortunately, it turned out to be locust flavored, and ever since, Giuseppe had come to see them everyday in the hopes of getting more treats.

 Albus actually had not seen the owl since he came to school, but it seems that the greedy little bird had finally tracked him down. He probably saw Albus the last time he was delivering a letter to Rose.

 Speaking of which, he noticed a white envelope in Giuseppe’s claws that had to be for his cousin. It did not look like the type of parchment that a wizard would use, so it had to be from her Muggle grandparents: the Grangers. He tried to take it from him, but the owl refused to let go and even took a snap at his reaching hand. Finally, Albus got an idea to give him a small piece of his fried egg. While the bird chocked down the food, Albus snatched the letter and ran for the Ravenclaw table.

 “Rose,” Albus called out, “Rose, Giuseppe brought me your mail.”

 Rose continued to stare straight ahead. A strand of her red hair fell in her face, but she didn’t even bother push away.

 Sitting on the same bench as Rose, were some of the other Ravenclaw first-years, mostly boys and one Chinese girl with her nose buried in a copy of. Sitting across from her, was that same gang of four Ravenclaw girls, giggling and gossiping, and now pointing at Albus, as well as everyone else within their range of sight.

 “Did you hear me, Rose?” Albus tried again. “I have your mail.”

 But Rose acted as though Albus wasn’t there. She just continued to stare down at her plate, her chin in her hands, as though she were waiting for the bacon to put on a show.

 “Thank you, Albus.” Albus’ answered for her as he shook the envelope in front of his cousin’s face.

 “It’s from your Grandma and Grandpa Granger,” he told her, hoping that would perk Rose’s interest. “You know, for Muggles, they’ve gotten pretty good at all the wizarding ways of doing things.”

 Rose moved her one hand to take a very minuscule bite of bacon, but still acted as though Albus was not there. Not as if she was ignoring him to be mean, but more like she was in her own little world right now. Or maybe just wanted to <i>think</i> she was in her own little world.

 “Are you going to read it?” Albus asked, his arm becoming tired from holding the letter up for so long. “Do you want me to read it to you?”

 Rose did not answer, but Albus’ own curiosity allowed him to assume that meant ‘yes’.

 He tore the envelope open, squeezed into the seat next to Rose, and began reading aloud, quietly enough so he was sure that the Ravenclaw Gang could not hear anything he said.

 “They say they’re really proud of you for getting sorted into Ravenclaw,” He told her, hoping the hearing that someone was proud of where she was might lift her spirits. “Listen to what your grandpa says, ‘Sorted into the house that is distinguished by intellect; you’re defiantly a Granger’.”

 However, it only seemed to make things worse. At the words, Rose pushed herself away from the table and stomped off and out of the Great Hall, her gasping breath telling him that she was trying as hard as she could to keep from crying. Leaving Albus still holding the letter from her grandparents, the Ravenclaw Gang laughing quite loudly at his turned back.

  
<hr>

  
 Albus closed up his collapsible telescope and slid it into book bag as Astronomy class concluded. Unlike all the day classes where all the houses would be separated, all the school’s first-years took the class together. Astronomy could only be taught at midnight, so there was not enough time to separate the students by house. The N.E.W.T. students had their classes on the weekend, but Albus still wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

 However, unless a student had night vision or actually paid attention, they might not have even noticed everyone was together. No one in the class even talked to each other. Everyone had their own telescope, had to chart their own star charts, and anyone caught talking when they were supposed to be working got an automatic five points taken away from their house by Professor Sinestra.

 However, even as the students were all kept in a circle, houses separated, as they studied the night sky, as soon as Professor Sinestra called “Class dismissed’, the students quickly found their own kind and walked down the staircase in those groups. The Ravenclaw students, as much as they all claimed to love learning, were all always the first ones to leave. But it didn’t seem to bother Albus as much as it had before, now that he had friends among his own house to walk with. Tonight, he found himself in the middle of a small gang of Gryffindors including Damien, Bailey, and Gavin.

 “Do you want to come with us, Albus?” Gavin asked him as the group made their way down the staircase. “Elle thinks she found the Room of Requirement that the resistance used during the war. She says there are even messages and people’s names carved into the stone. Do you want to come with us to see? It’s not like we wouldn’t be able to outrun Filtch if he sees us.”

 “No, thank you,” Albus told them, “I’m exhausted. I’m just going straight to bed.”

 Bailey shrugged. “Have it you way. I normally just get my sleep in History of Magic.”

 At Bailey statement, the group of Gryffindor burst into laughter. But even though Albus’ laughed right along with them, he still couldn’t help feeling somewhat of an outsider. It was easy to tell the Bailey, Damien, and Gavin were thick as thieves, despite the fact they were complete strangers not two months ago. They sat together during class, they were together outside of class, and even had served one detention together. Some of the older teachers that Gryffindor had gained in a new ‘Golden Trio’ had remarked it. Must of the staff took it as a joke, but one couldn’t denying that the three of them defiantly had a much closer eye kept on them than everyone else.

It was almost like seeing a snapshot of his dad and his friends when they were at Hogwarts; a snapshot the Albus seem stand far off to the side in.

 “We’ll see you in the morning, Albus,” Gavin called back he followed after Damien and Bailey, who had already gotten a running start down the corridor.

 Even though the thought of his warm bed calling out to him overpowered his desire to explore, he still wondered about the Room of Requirement. What kind of messages would the resistance have carved into the walls? It wouldn’t have been battle plans, or something that could be used against them by Lord Voldemort’s forces. Maybe it was things like sayings or passages written for the dead. How many people would he know who had carved their names into the wall. Neville probably did, along with his wife, Hannah. His mother’s might be there. But he knew that his dad’s, Uncle Ron, and Aunt Hermione probably wouldn’t; they never-

 “POTTER!” he heard someone shouting behind him, “ALBUS POTTER!”

 Albus turned around and instantly felt his blood begin to boil. Running up behind him was none other than Scorpius Malfoy. What was <i>he</i> doing following him? The Slytherin dormitories were the other way.

 At first, Albus held out the hope that the Malfoy boy had been calling out for someone else; that maybe, against all odds, there was another Albus Potter in this school that the Malfoy boy was really calling out to. That delusion ended rather quickly as he stopped Albus from leaving, grabbing onto his shoulder.

 “Hello, Malfoy,” Albus tried to say in a cold voice. “What are you doing out this late? Aren’t the Slytherin dormitories the other way?”

 “Looking for you!” Scorpius answered angrily. “And will you stop with that ‘Malfoy’ nonsense? I came out here to apologies.”

 Albus stopped dead in his tracks. Slowly, he turned around to see if this was some kind of trick. For all he knew, this was just some ruse so he could finish insulting the rest of Albus’ family. James had used this trick on Albus to many times before in his life for Scorpius to be able to pull it over on him.

Scorpius was hunched over, gasping for breath, but his face held an expression of pure sincerity.

 “Are you at least going to hear me out?” Scorpius asked when Albus had yet to answer him.

 Albus thought for a moment. James had gotten of lifetime of laughs out of this shunt when <i>he</i> used it, but the boy in front of him was clearly not James. And besides, other than one infraction, which even now he was apologizing for, Albus had no reason to think he was being tricked.

 “Alright,” Albus finally answered, setting his book bag down and leaning against one of the stone columns.

 Scorpius inhaled deeply, as though preparing for a very long-winded speech. Finally, the words poured out, almost faster than Albus could keep up with them.

 “I’m sorry I called your aunt what I did, but I honestly didn’t know it was a bad word,” Scorpius explained, still breathing somewhat hard. “Both my dad and my mum use that word at home all the time. I just assumed it meant someone who has Muggle parents.”

 Scorpius was panting, and straining, as though his mouth could not form the words as fast as his conscience could order him to speak them.

“But when I got back to the common room after class, a fifth year told me what it really meant,” he said, becoming quiet, “I had no idea what an awful word it was, I swear!”

 At that last statement, Scorpius stopped as though to study Albus’ expression. He as though he were trying to figure whether Albus was truly listening to his apology, or simply humoring him, so he would let Albus go off to bed.

The spell of quiet didn’t last very long, however, before the words began pouring out all over again. Albus <i>was</i> listening to Scorpius’ words, although paying more attention to the emotion than the actual words. One thing he <i>had</i> learned from years of fake apologies from his older brother, was that the words of it hardly matter; as long as you heard the true plea for forgiveness in the tone of voice and expression of face, you could tell a person was truly sorry. And from everything Albus could see and hear, the one coming from Scorpius was genuine.

 “So,” Scorpius asked, breathing deeply from the effort of the long-winded speech, “do you accept by apology? Do you forgive me for what I said?”

But Albus didn’t have the chance to answer, because the conversation was interrupted by the sound of a heavy book bag falling to the floor. Albus spun around without even thinking, not sure <i>what</i> he would say if he saw a teacher. However, as quickly as the panic had filled, it left when he saw that the noise wasn’t made by anyone who could get him in trouble. It was a mousey-haired girl, probably not any older than Albus, walking across the connected hallway.

“I know that girl,” Scorpius remarked, pointing to the girl. “That’s Maris Bletchley. She’s a Slytherin.”

When he heard that, Albus was certain they were done for. He had heard all kinds of stories from his older cousins about how Slytherins would snitch on and even tell lies about Gryffindors solely for sake of getting house points taken away. Scorpius would no doubt be left out of this girl’s report, but Albus began to panic at the though of all the reaction he would get from his house mates when they learned it was <i>him</i> who lost them so many points.

“Maris,” Scorpius shouted out, clearly not worried about teachers, “Hey, Maris! What are you doing out this late?”

But Maris Bletchley didn’t as much as glace at the two boys. Her gazed remained straight ahead, her steps slow and shaky. She didn’t even go back for the books that had scattered across the stone floor, so she certainly wasn’t going to listen to what Scorpius said to her.

 “That’s weird,” Scorpius said with a raised eyebrow. “Bletchley is so inbred; she can’t even trick the house elves. I didn’t think it was actually in her to have the mental capacity to ignore someone.”

 “Well, what’s she doing?” Albus wondered aloud as he snuck around the corner, Scorpius not far behind.

 Maris Bletchley’s steps were so, and far too distinct sounding. It would be only at matter of time before she herself was discovered by a teacher. She wasn’t even bothering turning her head to make sure no one was following her.

 “MARIS!” Albus shouted down the corridor, hoping to make her realize how much trouble see was in. “MARIS, COME BACK HERE BEFORE ONE OF THE TEACHERS SEE YOU!”

 But still, Maris continued forward, not even turning her head to see who had shouted at her.

 “It’s like she’s in some sort of trance,” Scorpius observed. “I don’t think she even heard you.”

 This time, Albus tried to see where it was that Maris was walking to, in the hopes he could she where the source of Maris’ trance. When he peeked around the last corner, he shifted his line of vision to match that of Maris’. As he leaned his head to the right, he was finally able to see the object of Maris Bletchley’s interest. It seemed to be another student. A first-year, although he seemed too small to be even <i>that</i> old, for he was practically swimming in the black robes he wore. He beckoned Maris closer still, with a boney finger and a surprisingly pleasing cackle.

 “It’s that ugly first-year peeking behind the trophy case,” Albus pointed out.

 “Where?” Scorpius leaned forward over Albus. “I don’t see.”

 “Down there,” Albus pointed Scorpius’ gaze lower, “He kind of small, so he’s hard to see in the shadows.”

 But when Scorpius saw where Albus’ was pointing, his face lost all its colors and his breathing became heavy.

 “What’s wrong?” Albus asked, even though he was almost too afraid to hear the answer.

 “That’s not a human, Albus!” Scorpius shouted in a hushed tone, his eyes quickly filling with fear. “That’s an Erkling! They EAT kids!”

 Now, Albus had never heard anyone talk about what an Erkling was before, but by the sudden loss of color in Scorpius’ face, he knew it could not be anything that children were meant to be alone with. When he looked back towards the cloaked figure, he saw that it was, indeed, not human. It had a thin face with kiwi-green skin, and long, pointy nose, with a chin to match. And now that Maris was finally getting close enough, Albus could also see the hungry gleam and pointy-toothed grin on the creatures face. Albus didn’t need Rose lecturing behind him now. He could tell on his own that things were very, <i>very</i> bad right now.

 “What do we do?” Albus spun around, and grabbed Scorpius by the shoulders. “We can’t just let Maris get eaten by some midget-troll!”

 “Class didn’t let out the long ago,” Scorpius told him, already beginning to walk back towards the Astronomy tower. “Professor Sinestra is probably still in her office. If we run, she’ll probably be able to stop it!”

 He knew there wasn’t enough time to go running after Professor Sinestra. Not if they wanted to save Maris too. So, instead of following Scorpius, Albus ran straight ahead, even though he didn’t have any idea what he was going to do when he got to the end of the hall.

 “Albus,” Scorpius exclaimed, causing Albus to stop shortly in his tracks. “What are you doing? The teachers’ offices are this way!”

 “C’mon!” Albus gestured back the way he was running.

 But Scorpius didn’t understand what Albus was trying to say. On the other hand, if he did, he didn’t want to act like it.

 “C’mon what?” he asked.

 “C’mon, we’ve got to help her!” Albus explained with exasperation.

 “Are you crazy?” Scorpius shouted, his eyes going wide. “That thing will just eat her, and then eat <i>us</i>!”

But Albus could wait around and argue while one of their classmates became someone’s dinner, so he simply took off. Eventually, the footsteps he heard behind him told him the Scorpius had finally given in and decided to help him.

 “Potter!” Scorpius shouted, following after him, “Albus, are you crazy?”

 He couldn’t be that crazy, Albus thought to himself; not if Scorpius was following him.

 By the time they each the end of the hall, Maris was already close enough for the Erkling to grab. Her eyes had a glassly quality to them, and her expression was blank. She was completely unaware of the monster licking its lips in front of her; unaware she was walking into her own grave.

 With only mere second to react, Albus reached into his book bag, and pull out the first thing his hand found.

 “Hey, you!” Albus shouted as he through a glass bottle of ink at the back of the creatures.

It shattered to pieces with an echoing sound the echoed through the corridor. Luckily, the sound of breaking glass and splattering ink seemed to be the exact sound that brought people out of trances, because Maris’ eyes lost the glass look they held before, and she began shaking her head violently. Albus could tell the instant that Maris came back to full consciousness, because her face took on an expression of utter fear and dread at the creature in front of her.

However, by then, it didn’t matter what she didn’t, because the Erkling had completely lost interest in her. Now, it had its eyes set on the <i>two</i> first years that actually had the nerve to come to it willingly. Licking its lips, the creature spun around and began a clunky, but quick pace towards Albus and Scorpius.

 “Albus,” Scorpius gasped as the creature began running, closer and closer, “<i>this</i> is your plan?”

 It was true. Albus plan had been to get the creature away from Maris Bletchley by any means possible, but he hadn’t exactly known what he would do once he did.

 “What do we do?” he asked Scorpius, weakly.

 “We run, oh genius of the Gryffindors!” Scorpius told him, dragging him backwards by the hood of his robes

 “MARIS, RUN!” Albus shouted, as he stumbled along backwards, hoping he could at least make sure the girl was okay.

 It took barely a moment for Maris to scramble to her feet and sprint towards the dungeon staircase, disappearing from sight. Albus felt some amount of relief knowing the girl was safe. A fleeting feeling that soon disappeared, as soon as he realized how quickly the Erkling was gaining on both him and Scorpius.

At some point, Scorpius lost his grip on Albus’ hood, causing Albus to tumble to the ground. Scorpius didn’t wait for him, but with the kind of creature that was following behind then, Albus wasn’t so sure he blamed him.

 “WHAT DO WE DO?” Albus shouted, as he pulled himself to his feet and raced to catch up with boy in front of him, “Slytherins’ the other way, and I don’t think I can run all the way to Gryffindor! Besides, what if that thing goes after another student before we can get help?””

 “Ravenclaw!” Scorpius pointed towards an eagle-shaped knocker not five feet in front of them. “We don’t have to find a teacher. I’ll bet a sixth or seventh-years could handle that thing just as well as any of the teachers could.”

 While Albus highly doubted that, it was a Ravenclaw N.E.W.T. student or just continue to let this monster rampage through the school.

 “But we don’t know the Ravenclaw password!” Albus suddenly realized, as Scorpius reached for the eagle knocker.

 “This dormitory doesn’t have a password,” “It will let anyone in as long as they can solve the riddle it gives them!”

 “You make it sound so simple,”

 “All we have to do is answer a riddle, Albus,” Scorpius told him as he gasped for breath. “How hard can it be?”

 Scorpius gave three sharp knocks against the brass, causing the eagle to come to life and ask the fatal question.

 “<i>You are walking through a path in the woods, and you come to a fork in the rode. On rode will lead you to Hogsmead Village, and the other will just lead you further into the woods. Two men stand at each rode, one tells only truths, and one tells only lies. You are allowed to ask one question. What will you ask to find the path that leads to town</i>?”

 Albus blinked in confusion and Scorpius’ previous look of confidence vanished from his face. <i>These</i> were the riddles that they expected children to solve? He knew that Ravenclaws were supposed to be intelligent and creative, but the riddle was so obscure, he barely understood the question, let alone the answer.

 “We could ask it which one’s the liar.” Albus asked, breaking himself out of his spell of awe-struck confusion.

 “No, they’ll just both say they’re not the liar,” Scorpius told him. “What if we asked them to show us the path to the woods?”

 “No, they’ll just each point to a different path,” Albus shook his head, feeling his heartbeat quicken as he began to hear the faint sound of footsteps stomping across the stone floor. “What about ‘Which path doesn’t lead to the village’?”

 “That’s just the same problem as before!” Scorpius exclaimed as the clunky footsteps drew closer and became louder.

 "If I were to ask you which path leads to town, what would you reply?" came a voice from behind them.

 “<i>Very insightful</i>,” the knocker answered, as the door opened slowly.

 Albus and Scorpius turned around to see a pajama-clad girl with bed-ragged red hair, with an exasperated looked on her face and polar bear slippers on her feet.

 “<i>Why</i> are you two still wondering around the halls?” she asked in an almost-bossy tone.

 “ROSE!” Albus shouted, as soon as he found himself face to face with his cousin.

 “What are you two doing out of bed this late at night?” Rose asked them in a voice of calm annoyance, even as Albus and Scorpius heard the Erkling’s clunky steps draw closer and closer. “You do know if one of the teachers catches you out of bed, you get twenty points each taken away from your house.”

 Nevertheless, Rose continued to lecture, Scorpius and Albus watched the Erkling appear from around the corner, glance around while sniffing through the air, and set its sights on the now three first-years, just waiting to be eaten. Albus could swear he saw a trail of drool tailing the monster from behind.

 “Rose!” Scorpius pointed behind as the Erkling drew closer.

 “Don’t you try to shift blame onto me, Malfoy,” Rose crossed her arms across her chest, “That’s not going to satisfy anyone who catches you unless you can come up with a good reason for why you haven’t gone to bed yet.”

 Albus, not trusting himself to come up with the right words to say in so short an amount of time, simply grabbed Rose by the hair and the chin and turned her so she could see for herself why they were still out of bed. At first, Rose looked as though she might scream, but as soon as she saw what the boys saw, her voice went quiet and her face became as white as it had been the day she wasn’t sorted into Gryffindor.

 “Alright,” Rose gulped as her eyes grew large, “<i>that’s</i> a very good reason.”

 This time, instead of the familiar cackle they had been hearing so far, the Erkling let loose an echoing roar, and its face took on a look of anger. This time, Albus didn’t need a N.E.W.T. student that they had just made things that much worse.

 “Both of you, run!” Scorpius shouted as he sprinted into the Ravenclaw Common room, Albus at his heels, holding Rose by the wrist.

 “How did that thing get in the castle?” Rose exclaimed once they finally reached the Common Room floor. “You two didn’t let that thing follow you back from the Forbidden Forest, did you?”

 “Yea, that’s it, Rose,” Scorpius gasped, but still able to sound sarcastic. “Albus and I found a forest monster that lives off the flesh of children, but instead of running away like scared chickens, we thought it would be more fun to bring them back to the castle to see how many of our friends it could eat before anyone noticed!”

 But before Rose could come up with a response, another roar echoed from the bottom of the staircase, following by the growingly familiar clunking footsteps.

 “You didn’t even shut the door behind you?” Rose screamed at the boys.

 “Lecture later,” Albus told his cousin, eyes racing over the Common Room. “Right now, we need a place to hide!”

 Rose’s eyes began to race around the common room, looking for somewhere, anywhere, that would be out of range of the Erkling. Finally, her eyes rested on a dark blue tapestry of the constellation, Pegasus. With one swipe of her arm, the tapestry was pushed aside to revile a heavy wooden door hidden behind it.

 “Up through here!” Rose screamed as she ran off ahead of them.

 As the three of them raced up the stairs, a sudden though seeped its way into Albus’ mind at the seventh step, causing him to stop dead in his tracks.

 “Rose, boys can’t go up into the girls’ dormitories,” Albus reminded her. “Scorpius and I will fall right back down into the Erkling’s mouth!”

 “We’re not going to the dormitories,” Rose turned her head to tell Albus. “This is the Ravenclaws’ secret entrance to the Astronomy tower. If we can get the Erkling to follow us, I might have an idea!”

 “You have your own secret entrances to the classrooms?” Scorpius asked, curiosity shortly overriding his fear.

 “<i>Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure</i>,” Rose reminded them, trying to sound singsong even as she gasped for breath. “Faster, boys!”

 Albus felt his heart beat faster and faster until it felt like it was going to burst out of his chest. But, finally, at the very end of the staircase, Rose pushed up against the ceiling, allowing the moonlight to flood in. With one very high jump, she grabbed the ledge and pull herself up. When she scrambled up to the floor above them, she held out her hands to Scorpius and Albus to help pull them up.

 No wonder the Ravenclaw students always disappeared so fast.

 “Okay, is it following us?” Rose asked from the ledge.

 Soon enough, though, Rose’s question was answered for her by yet another deafening roar. A sound that was much to close for any of them to feel safe.

 “Yes, it’s following us!” Scorpius informed her, crouching over the trap door in the hopes he could hold the monster off for a few precious moments.

 “Good!” Rose breathed, as she looked down onto the courtyard, calculating her next move.

 “Alright, Rose,” Albus asked, joining his cousin at the side of the ledge. “What’s your brilliant plan?”

 Rose squinted in the darkness, as though she knew exactly what she was looking for, but she didn’t bother to tell Albus what that think might be.

 “There!” she pointed to the castle wall off to the left. “See the brooms left there for the first-year flying lessons?”

 “What about them?”

 “Well, I’m going to need one of them for this to work.”

 “But needed a broom, why did you lead us all the way up here?” Albus shouted, keeping his eyes on the trapdoor that Scorpius was trying to block. “Don’t you have a secrets passage way to the ground?”

 “We’re going to charm it up here,” Rose explained, pulling her wand from the inside of her pajama sleeve. “<i>Accio</i> broom!”

 But nothing happened. Every single one of the brooms remain happily on the ground, a good three hundred feet below them. Rose’s wand didn’t even so much as send out a spark.

 “It’s <i>not</i> working!” Albus informed his cousin, not so bluntly.

 “Well, this is an upper level charm!” Rose defended her skills as a witch. “And this is the first time I’ve tried it.”

 “It’s <i>what</i>?” Albus exclaimed at Rose, the “brilliant” Ravenclaw.

 Suddenly, the both of them were distracted by a shout from Scorpius and the distinct sound of the trapdoor jolting as the Erkling tried to push it up from under Scorpius’ weight.

 “IT’S COMING!” Scorpius shouted as the trap door shook under him.

 “<i>Accio</i> broom!” Rose tried again, but to no avail.

 Unlike them, the Erkling had decided to change strategies. Instead of only one massive jolt, it began to shake the door continuously in the hopes that Scorpius would lose his grip and get tossed to the side.

 “Rose, we need a new plan!” Albus shouted, as he watch Scorpius, eyes squinted and teeth clench, hang onto the trap door for dear life as his thin frame shook violently.

 “I CAN DO THIS, ALBUS!” Rose screamed, half out of fear, half out of desperation. “<i>ACCIO</i> BROOM!”

 This time, the broom shot up to the Astronomy tower faster than it probably could have flown, right into Rose’s waiting hand.

 “I got it!” she shouted in momentary celebration.

 “Wonderful,” Scorpius gave a mock cheer as the door continued to shake beneath him. “Now what?”

 “Okay, Albus,” Rose turned towards her cousin, letting him in on the finer details of her plan. “Erkling live off eating children, but luckily for us, they’re not terribly bright.”

She ended by holding the broom up to Albus and thrusting it in his direction. “All you have to do is fly this broom just a meter or so beyond the ledge, and it will probably follow you right off!”

 “But, Rose,” Albus argued, pointing out the one flaw in his cousin’s plan. “I don’t know how to fly!”

 The tower fell dead silent, save the struggles of the Erkling grunting and struggling under his feet.

 “Excuse me?” Rose glared, with an expression that showed she was trying not to scream. “Your father was possibly the greatest Seeker this school ever saw, your mother played professional Quidditch, your own brother’s a Seeker <i>now</i>, and <i>you</i> can’t even ride a broom!”

 “What about you?” argued Albus. “You come from the famous Weasley Legacy of Quidditch!”

 “I also come from the famous Granger Legacy of ‘Rose, get off that broom before you break your neck’!”

 “Oh, for the love of Merlin!” Scorpius groaned as he jumped off the door and reached Rose in no more than four leaps.

 However, the door only remained closed a mere moment after that before the Erkling burst through, tearing the trapdoor off its hinges and across the stone rooftop. Certain that he felt his heart stop, Albus sunk down along the ledge, dragging his cousin down with him. While the Erkling lifted its nose to sniff through the air, Albus covered his face with his hands and waited for his life to flash before his eyes.

 “Hey, dung-breath! Over here!”

 Albus peeked through his fingers just enough to see that Scorpius had mounted the ancient school broom, and was standing as close to the ledge as seemed physically possible. To his right, Rose curled against the ledge, hiding her face behind her knees and shaking, as though she worry afraid to see even the smallest hint that her plan might not work.

Scorpius kicked himself way from ledge, wobbling just slightly, but certainly not falling to his death. And now, the Scorpius seemed to have completely attention of the Erkling, lulling it away from the fact that there were already two children not three feet in front of him; proving Rose’s words about Erklings not being the brightest creatures that ever walked the earth.

Scorpius looked down, becoming slightly paler than was even before, and then shook his head, as the shaking the memory of the height from his brain. Finally, he surveyed the distance he had floated from the tower, making sure he was still close enough for the creature see him before he moved onto the next phase of his plan.

 “That’s it, ugly. Come get your dinner,” he called out to the monster, beckoning it forward with his one free hand. “Yummy, yummy first-year floating all alone with no adults to smash you over the head with a cauldron.”

 The Erkling had now completely forgotten about Rose, now that there was another child right in front of him, literally begging to eaten. It ran its tongue over its scaly lips and came closer.

 “Mmm,” Scorpius hummed, running his nose over his arm. “Pureblood: the <i>other</i>, other white meat.”

 Just as Rose predicted, the Erkling ran towards Scorpius and leapt at him, falling to his death when Scorpius was but a few precious inches out of his grasp. And then, with a sound similar to that of an extremely heavy water balloon, Albus felt his heart start to beat again, and Rose’s fingernails pull out of his skin.


	5. Chapter 5 The Arcane ScoRA

 

Chapter 5 The Arcane ScoRA

  
“How did you know that would work, Rose?” Albus asked later as they walked back down the stairs, after everyone had had a chance to calm down.

“Scorpius, are you sure that you landed the broom back near the others?” she asked, ignoring Albus’ question.

The tone between the three students was a lot more relaxed, now that their lives were no longer in mortal danger. After all, like Albus’ own father had learned as a first-year, people didn’t wrestle themselves from the jaws of death and not come out of it with a deepened sense of closeness among them.

“Rose, there is a dead student-eater spattered across the school yard!” Scorpius reminded her, jumping the last three steps to the Common Room floor, the carpet cushioning the noise. “I don’t think anyone is going to be looking at the brooms! Now, how did you know?”

Rose sighed and shook her head, as though this question had the world’s simplest answer. “There are about five N.E.W.T. students in Ravenclaw taking Hagrid’s Care of Magical Creatures class,” Rose explained. “They’re studying trolls, ogres, and Erklings right now. All they ever talk about in this house is school work!”

“Well, then you must fit right in!” Scorpius told her, running his hand along the top ridge of one of the sofas.

Rose bit her lip and somewhat violently opened the door to the corridor staircase, as though she really wanted to be taking her feelings out on Scorpius.

“But don’t you see, Rose?” Albus began explaining to his cousin before a meltdown could start, also being the first to start back down the stairs. “The Sorting Hat was right; you do belong in Ravenclaw. If you weren’t in there, you wouldn’t have known what to do just now.”

The faintest wisp of a smile appeared on Rose’s lips. It was the happiest Albus had seen his cousin ever since they arrived at Hogwarts.

In fact, Albus himself was feeling ecstatic as well. All his life, he had been regaled by his fathers adventures at Hogwarts; from the time he and Uncle Ron defeated a full grown mountain troll, to the time he and Aunt Hermione traveled back in time, saved a hippogriff from execution and helped a his godfather escape from custody, and even when he led the Hogwarts resistance against the Ministry. Now Albus could understand that look that his dad got on his face whenever he talked about his glory days: what just happened with the Erkling was nothing short of amazing! Sure, at the time, he was too distracted by the fear of certain death, but now he nearly felt like he was floating.

However, at the bottom of the staircase, when his gaze shifted to Scorpius, he noticed a very different expression: a mixture of fear, panic, and nausea.

“What’s wrong, Scorpius?” Rose asked him before Albus could.

“Oh, Merlin,” Scorpius gasped, staying silent for moment so the others could hear the footsteps closing in on them. “That’s Professor Vhartan! She’s on duty to patrol the halls tonight! If she catches us, she’ll take away every point our houses have earned, and drag us to Flitwick’s office by our eyelids!”

At those words, Albus was certain that his expression was now near identical to Scorpius’. Professor Vhartan was nothing less than a pure sadist when it came to the smallest of classroom infractions. He didn’t even want to think about what she would do to students that she caught out of bed.

“You two better get out of here now!” Rose told them in a hushed tone.

“But she’s coming from the direction of our houses!” Albus told her, his breath catching as the feeling of pure terror began to pierce into his very soul. “We don’t have anywhere to run to!”

The footsteps clicked loudly and sharply against the stone floor; and even though he never thought it was possible to tell a person’s mood from their feet, he seemed certain that Professor Vhartan was not in a sunny mood right now.

“We are as good as dead,” Scorpius said grimly. “Have you two even been dragged anywhere by your eyelids before? I don’t imagine that it’s very pleasant!”

But Rose, clearly not quite ready to surrender, jumped to the floor and ran out ahead of the boys.

“Follow me!” Rose whispered, as she jumped from the steps and started down the hallway. “I know a place to hide!”

Trying to run as quickly and lightly as possible, Albus and Scorpius followed after Rose. Through doorways, stairways and corridors, black robes followed a pink one, the sound of heeled boots trailing behind them.

Suddenly, Rose skidded to a stop, causing Scorpius to crash into her, and Albus to crash into Scorpius before the both of them fell flat on their backs. Rose spun around to point to the doorway, kicking it opened with one of her slipper-covered feet.

“In here!” she whispered, keeping her eyes on the end of the hallway, watching for Professor Vhartan.

“This a girls’ bathroom!” Scorpius hissed at Rose. “We’re trying to stop getting into trouble tonight!”

“Who’s down there?” came the familiar hissing voice that they normally only had to endure through Potions.

“Eyelids,” she reminded him as she held the door open.

Scorpius didn’t need anymore prompting as he raced through the open door. Albus, who was still on the floor, crawled into the bathroom, and Rose followed behind, remembering to close the door behind them.

The bathroom was utterly dark, save for the faint moonlight that beamed into the room. What struck Albus first and foremost was that everything in the bathroom was in perfect order. Whenever he had gone into the boys’ bathroom, sinks were left running, puddles and wet towels were scattered across the floor, along with the occasional smells that he choose not to dwell on. He knew as a law of physics that girls were much neater than boys were, but this bathroom looked as though it had not even been used for decades.

“Back here,” Rose instructed them as she led them to a tiny alcove behind the last bathroom stall.

Together, the three students scrambled to the opposite end of the bathroom, huddling against the wall, listening for any sound that might signal the end of their days at Hogwarts.

A leaky pipe dripped rhythmically into the sinks, but other than that and the hushed sounds of their breathing, the room was completely silent. As they heard Professor Vhartan’s boots becoming quieter before completely vanishing. It didn’t even sound as though she had opened the door to look for anyone. After a long wait in the silence, Rose got up from the floor, still somewhat hunched, as her ears perked, listening for Professor Vhartan in case she decided to double back.

“Alright,” she finally breathed with a sigh of relief, “I think we’re safe now. But we should probably wait a few more minutes before we try to go back to the dormitories anyway.”

But Albus and Scorpius remained on the floor, their backs to the wall, like prisoners waiting for the firing squad.

“How do you know no one will find us in here?” Scorpius asked as he hugged his knees to his chest. “Someone could come in here to use the bathroom, or Vhartan might have heard us run in here-”

“No one is going to use this bathroom,” Rose interrupted, not even bothering to whisper. “And Professor Vhartan is not going to care if there’s noise coming from this bathroom.”

Rose seemed so sure of herself. Rose, who wouldn’t leave the house before checking three times that her shoes were tied, looked thoroughly convinced that this bathroom was some sort of impervious shield that would keep them from being found.

“Why?” Albus asked.

Just then, Albus’ question was answered for him in the form of an ear-splitting shriek. Three sets of hands rushed to cover three sets of ears to block out the noise that Albus was convinced would shatter a mirror.

“That’s why,” Rose told him, still holding her hands to her ears.

Albus looked up to get a better look at what his cousin was talking about. Floating above them was a ghost, but not any of the ghosts that flouted around the great rooms, among their houses. This ghost was that of a girl, a Hogwarts student. Her hair was lank, pimples were dotted across her face like freckles, and her glasses were so thick, Albus wondered how anyone could be able to see through them.

“Who-” Scorpius began, “what is that?”

“This is Moaning Myrtle,” Rose explained to the boys, “She haunts the bathroom.”

“She haunts a bathroom?” Scorpius asked skeptically, one eyebrow raised.

“Not the whole bathroom,” Rose clarified, “Just one of the toilets.”

“Well, that makes a lot more sense,” Scorpius drawled sarcastically.

Moaning Myrtle, on the other hand, did not seem so amused. She glared down at the three panting students, a look of frustration and anger in her listless eyes, which shown even through the coke-bottle glasses.

“What are you two doing is here?” Myrtle pointed towards Albus and Scorpius. “You two aren’t girls! You don’t belong in here!”

“I know that, Myrtle,” Rose tried to appease the ghost girl, and above all, keep her quiet. “But we’ve had a very rough night; rougher than you can even imagine. Please, please, please-”

“I’m going to go tell one of the teachers that you’re in here!”

With those words, Myrtle shot off like a rocket and made her way for the bathroom door, taking a large breath, as though she were getting to scream for anyone who could hear her.

“No, you can’t tell!” Albus shouted, trying to stop her.

Albus didn’t why he though that would, but it must simply been his lucky night. Myrtle stopped in her…tracks, and shot back towards Albus, floating right in front of his face, their noses almost touching.

“Why?” she barked, as though daring him to give her an actual answer.

Albus was about to explain to Myrtle that if she did, they would all be expelled, but Scorpius beat him to the punch by offering a better reason.

“Because if you do, you’ll be breaking the rules.”

After those words where spoken, the entire room fell silent. Even the pipes seemed to stop droning from the shock of the random statement.

“What rules?” Myrtle asked, still angry, but looking genuinely curious.

Rose chewed on her bottom lip as she waited for Scorpius to continue. But Scorpius seemed so shocked that Myrtle was actually listening to him, that he seemed at a loss for words. However, as Myrtle waited for Scorpius to give her an explanation, Albus watched the wheels begin to turn in Rose’s head, coming up with an answer for him.

“The rules…” Rose started, “of our secret society!”

Albus turned back towards his friends and wrinkled his nose. What secret society were they talking about. Had there been some owl that he had simply not gotten?”

“What secret society?”

However, when Albus study the two expressions before him more closely, it finally dawned on him. There was no secret society. Scorpius had merely been winging it when he stopped Myrtle, and Rose was winging off that statement, and Scorpius continued to embellish off her statement again.

“The one…that the three of us belong to,” Scorpius went along with Rose. “And if you tell the teachers, it won’t be a secret society anymore.”

Myrtle’s brow furrowed, as though she couldn’t quiet decided whether or not Scorpius was telling the truth. For once in his life, Albus was beginning to see the benefits of being friends with such a skilled liar.

“What’s your society called?” Myrtle finally asked after a moment of silence.

Two blank stares met Albus’ gaze. They didn’t have an answer for that question.

“The…Arcane…” Rose tried, scanning her brain for words, trying to think of a name off the top of her head. “The Arcane…”

“Yes?” Myrtle crossed her arms.

Now, Albus realized it was his turn to help move this little white lie along. But if Rose was having trouble thinking of good word, then what chance did he have. He turned towards Scorpius, who didn’t seem to have anything to contribute either.

Scorpius, Rose, Albus…

“…ScoRA.” Albus finished for Rose.

Rose’s blank expression became one of confusion, but Scorpius decided to run with it.

“Yes!” Scorpius agreed quickly. “The Arcane ScoRA. That’s us!”

Myrtle nodded, but didn’t look like she believed the story one hundred percent.

“Well, what does the Arcane ScoRA do?”

“All kinds of things,” Albus told her, turning back around. “But for the most part, what we do is keep the school safe…from monsters…like we did tonight.”

“And the very first, and most important rule we have is,” Scorpius said, as though reading Albus’ mind, “DON’T GET CAUGHT!”

Upon hearing Scorpius’ rule, Myrtle snorted and laughed. She shook her head and looked down at the three first-years, gracing them with a look Albus had often seen coming from the prefects, the older, Quidditch players, and pretty much anyone else in the school that was at least two years older than they were.

“If there is a secret society that has been charged with protecting the school, why wouldn’t you want anyone to know that you just saved the school?” Myrtle inquired as she glided over the bathroom stalls. “You, with the dark hair; you’re a Potter, are you not? Your father is the famous Harry Potter?”

Myrtle finished the sentence with a slight giggle and dreamy looking smile on her face. Albus decided not to wonder what this meant as he nodded yes.

“Well, did he not tell you how famous he was as a student here? How he was the Tri-Wizard Champion, the Chosen One, and how his friends all had the pleasure of riding on his coattails? Who wouldn’t want that?”

For once tonight, Albus had an answer already prepared for Myrtle. It was one that his dad had said himself on many occasions: the downside of having a famous youth, somewhat tweaked to apply to this conversation.

“And look at how much it hindered him,” Albus explained in calm, level tone. “Professors watching every step he took, appearing in the Daily Prophet every time he so much as sneezed. Everything he ever did was made a thousand times harder simply because he was seen as a hero.”

“That’s why it’s so important for the…Arcane ScoRA to be kept a secret,” Rose embellished, she herself having heard this answer before too. “There is no way we would be able to continue to keep the school safe with our every move being watched. It’s better for everyone if nobody ever finds out who we are.”

“Everyone?” Myrtle wondered aloud with a heavy tone of skepticism, implying that she wondered what would be in it for her for keeping her mouth shut about all she had seen tonight.

“Why do you think we chose to hide in here?” came an answer from Scorpius, putting an end to his bout of silence.

Turning his gaze back once again, Albus observed a cunning sort of smile appear on Scorpius’ face. Even though he himself was still unsure of how he felt about this growing lie, Scorpius was beginning to look as though he were having fun with this story. Then again, the opportunity to test their skills of manipulation on a complete stranger; wasn’t that the sort of thing all Slytherins dreamed of?

“What we need,” Scorpius continued on in that familiar, somewhat arrogant drawl of his, “Is someone who can be our eyes and ears around the school. As mere humans, we have limits. We cannot pass through physical barriers: we can be stopped in our tracks by professors and prefects without them even needing to lift their wands: and a group of first-years sneaking around the school is certain to draw attention, no matter how skilled they are.”

Myrtle nodded to this with a growing smile on her face. Scorpius hadn’t exactly complemented her, but still, he was managing to heavily flatter her, getting her ready to say yes to whatever he said next.

“Myrtle, I would like to make you an offer,” he drawled on. “We need you, clearly a lot more than you need us, but we need you all the same. The only way for the Arcane ScoRA to thrive is if we have someone outside our immediate circle to inform us to the goings on in this school. And I’d, we’d, like you to be that person.”

Myrtle let loose a squeal of delight before she was able to regain her composure, floating back down to the ground do she could be at eye-level with the three of them.

“Why would I have any interest in doing that?” Myrtle asked, even though the wide smile on her face told them she had already said yes, at least in her mind.

“You admire Harry Potter,” Scorpius went on. “I can hear it in your voice. I can see it in your eyes. If you had the chance to do what he did, you would jump at it. Simple as that; and we both know it.”

This time, Myrtle did nothing to conceal her true feelings as she answered.

“I’ll do it!”

Certain that their safety as Hogwarts students was secure, Albus breathed a sigh of relief. Sure, eventually they were going to have to find a way to explained to Myrtle how the “Arcane ScoRA” disbanded as quickly as it had formed, but that was one of the great things about being eleven years old. None of them had to think that far into the future. All that mattered now was that no one was being expelled. At least not tonight.

“To the Arcane ScoRA!” Albus shouted, just to leave their cover on a convincing note.

“To the Arcane ScoRA!” they all then cheered together, including Moaning Myrtle.

Scorpius seemed to share the same sense of relief that Albus felt, but one look into Rose’s eyes told him all the what if’s that were running through her head. What if Myrtle learned they were lying, what if one of the other Ravenclaws had seen them lead the Erkling up to the Astronomy tower, what if Professor Vhartan wasn’t the only professor patrolling the halls that night, and on and on and on…

“What have we gotten ourselves into?” Rose asked through clenched teeth, her smile able to mask the fearful hiss.

“I have no idea,” Albus answered, also through clenched teeth as Moaning Myrtle did loop-de-loops through the air.

________________________________________

 

Any hopes of keeping the incident a secret were a lost cause. Like Scorpius had said the night before, a dead student-eater splatter across the courtyard was not the kind of thing you can keep secret for very long. Being that keeping it from the teachers who saw it on an early morning walk across the school grounds, or the nosy students that came running at the first sound of the teacher’s screams.

After that, to say that news of the Erkling was spreading around the school by the next week was certainly an understatement. It was all anyone could talk about every second of every day from the moment the Ravenclaw Quidditch team first found the remains on the way to an early morning practice. And for nearly a week afterwards, many of the younger students actually refused to leave their dormitories for fear that the Erkling had friends that might be coming back for them any day now. It wasn’t just the younger students who were afraid either. Prefects on their rounds of the halls would jump at the smallest of noises and teachers watched their students just a few moments longer after they left their classrooms.

It was only after Headmaster Flitwick held a school-wide assembly in which each of the professors demonstrated their skills in combat against Erkling-sized targets did things begin to calm down. Only three certain first-years seemed unable to forget the events that had transpired that night.

For long after the school’s panic had faded, Albus, Rose, and even Scorpius found themselves unsure of how to behave or even whether or not they should speak to one another. Sure, after they had survived that ordeal together, they could certainly nearly be friends, but brothers in a secret society? What these three together couldn’t exactly be called friendship. It was a strange combination of fear, awe, and mutual admiration that was shared among the members of the Arcane ScoRA. If the Arcane ScoRA even existed still, because none of them so much as breathed its name.

The underlying sense of panic felt among the society’s members didn’t do anything to ease the tension among them. For days afterwards, they would jump whenever a teacher called on them in class, shake in their shoes whenever they were stopped in the halls by their house prefects, and feel the constant queasiness in their stomachs as though they were filled with leaping toads. Albus almost began to wonder whether it would have been easier to just let Professor Vhartan catch them and simply take their punishment. No matter what she would have been able to think of in terms of their detention, at least it would be over and done with.

Nevertheless, the days went by, and the days eventually turned into weeks. They still hadn’t been caught, or so much as asked to stay after class. Eventually, even if they took longer that the rest of their classmates had, Albus’, Rose’s, and Scorpius’ routines began to return to normal, save the fact that Rose was no longer a moping mess. Although she still had yet to become friendly with any of the other Ravenclaw girls, a renewed glow about her went with being happy for the first time in ages. Everyone in the family of Gryffindors noticed it, but not one of them dared question it, for fear of jinxing the mood.

________________________________________

 

“Albus,” Rose ran from behind shouting one day, just before Transfiguration. “Albus, wait for me!”

Albus watched as his cousin pushed her way through a crowd of not-so-pleased fifth-year girls and doubled forward to gasp for breath when she finally reached him.

“You do know that we’re going to be seeing each other five minutes from now, don’t you?” he asked, even though he could already tell by Rose’s expression that whatever she had to say couldn’t wait.

“We have a problem,” Rose told him as she began to move forward toward the classroom, this time dragging Albus behind her.

“What is it?” Albus asked as he struggled to break the hold that Rose had on his robes.

“I had to walk past the bathroom last night,” Rose told him. “Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom! She asked me when we were going to have our next meeting.”

“Meeting?”

For a moment, Albus didn’t know what his cousin was talking about. At least he didn’t until Rose spun around and glared him straight in the eyes.

“Oh,” Albus suddenly remembered, “a ‘meeting’!”

“Yes, Albus! And I didn’t know what to tell her,” Rose went on. “I told her we were still trying to find a time when no one would notice we were gone, but that’s only going to appease her for so long!”

“Well, what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know! Something,” Rose shook her head, “If Moaning Myrtle finds out we were lying to her, she might go tell a teacher about that night, and we’ll be in worse trouble than we were to begin with!”

That possibility hadn’t even crossed Albus’ mind. The night of the Erkling, he was far too worried about being caught by Professor Vhartan to think too distantly into the future.

“So what do we do now?” he asked Rose, who seemed to be the only one who had thought this all through.

“Tonight,” she whispered, just a few steps away from the door to the Transfiguration classroom, “the two of us will go down to the Slytherin dormitories and talk to Scorpius. Until then, just try to see if you can keep up with today’s discussion on Switching Spells.”

 

*****

 

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Albus asked Rose as he followed her down the stairs. “Why would anyone want to live all the way down here?”

The dungeon level of the castle was creepy enough during the day. Albus couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to be down here at night, much less sleep down here. As he and Rose made their way down the staircase, Albus found himself aware of even the faintest echoes and every flicker in the candlelight. His heart pounded beneath his school robes, and his eyes flicked in every direction like a reflex.

“Albus, you see the Slytherins come from the dungeons every morning,” Rose argued, exasperated. “I think you’re just looking for excuses not to be down here!”

Albus ground his teeth. Deep down in his psyche, Albus knew that Rose was probably right. He had been afraid of the dungeons ever since the first day he had been down their, and for good reason. When James came home for Christmas his first year at Hogwarts, he celebrated his first night home by waiting until their parents were asleep, and regaling him and Lily with what may have been the scariest story Albus had ever heard.

As they jump down the last few steps and crept further into the dungeons, Albus began to remember the entire story in vivid detail. Back during the Second War, when Voldemort controlled Hogwarts and everything else in Britain, the students suffered horribly. The Carrows thrived on the suffering of others, and would torture even the youngest students for the smallest of infractions. Dumbledore’s Army tried to hold up their resistance and the teachers and even Headmaster Snape did everything they could to spare those around them from suffering, but they could not be everywhere at once.

James would go on to tell them about how when so many people suffer together for so long, something horrible happens. All that pain, all those screams, all that suffering, it turns into something ugly, something horrible. It becomes something as real as anything else that lives and breathes; and to make matters worse, it feeds in order to stay alive. It searches through people’s minds, finding what made them truly afraid. When Albus asked if this was how Dementors were created, James shook his head solemnly. These were so much worse than Dementors, he told them. A Dementor could be destroyed, but there was no spell or charm that could wipe away a living manifestation of a memory. So as long as it could continue to feed, that manifestation would drift through the halls of Hogwarts, in the darkest corners, in the deepest dungeons: waiting, hungering.

Albus kept these thoughts to himself as Rose began pushing on various points of one of the damp stone walls, sometimes even pressing her ear to the wall like a safe cracker.

“The entrance to the Slytherin Common Room is supposed to behind on of these stone,” she explained. “I’m not quiet sure where, but if it’s behind the walls, we should be able to her something. A hollow, voices from the Common Room, anything.”

Albus nodded, allowing his cousin to go back to her search while he stood silent and off to the side. Eventually, his gaze settled on one of the flickering candles that lined the damp hallway. How did a manifestation feed? He had heard his dad once talk about all the horrible things you would remember if you ever came near a Dementor. Even if this thing couldn’t be destroyed the way a Dementor could, did it at least feed the same way? What would a manifestation of a tortured memory look like anyway? Was it the kind of thing you could even see? Would there be a shriek or at least a chill in the air to warn them it was coming?

“Can we help you with something?”

Albus and Rose jumped simultaneously and turned around to be greeted with four dead-looking eyes, their two faces showed no signs of recognizable emotion. Other than a few blinks of quiet observation, there were no clues that they even registered the forms of those in front of them. Yet Albus felt his heart rate go back to normal. Whatever a tortured manifestation did look like, he was certain it didn’t look like the set of identical twins in front of him.

The two girls stood side by side, identical as bookends. They were alike in every aspect, from the creases in their school robes to their polished black shoes. Their dark hair tied back with lacy white ribbons, making their large, almost blank eyes even more noticeable. The Slytherin crests on their robes alone let anyone know that they belonged down there; and all the more obvious that Albus and Rose did not.

“Can I help you with something, ladies?” a drawling voice came from further down the corridor.

Coming from just behind the twins, was Scorpius Malfoy, his heavy book bag slung over his shoulder, loaded down with at least a dozen library books, all on the subject of Herbology. Albus could only guess that they were for the twelve-inch composition that was due three days from now.

“Hello, Scorpius,” the two girls greeted him in monotone unison, soft smiles on each of their faces.

“Claudia, Cecilia,” Scorpius greeted them dryly before shifting his gaze behind them to where Albus and Rose were waiting.

“Albus, Rose,” Scorpius greeted them in that same tone, but almost sounding as though he had been expecting them to be there. “How nice to see you.”

“Do you know these two, Scorpius?” the girl on the left asked Scorpius in a disgusted tone, referring to Albus and Rose in the same way a person may refer to a squished cockroach.

“I don’t see how that’s any concern of yours, Claudia.”

Claudia wrinkled her nose and flashed Scorpius with an irritated stare. It was the first time in the whole conversation that the two girls weren’t identical. Even the other girl, Cecilia, seemed shocked.

“Why are they here then?” Cecilia tried.

“Again, none of your concern, ladies,” Scorpius repeated himself.

So much for inter-house loyalties.

“Why don’t you two go into the Common Room,” Scorpius suggested to the two girls. “Albus and Rose did not come here to talk to you.”

This time, the girls’ faces held matching looks of annoyance. They didn’t move from their spot, but Scorpius continued to stare them down, his eyes growing more intense with every moment he was made to wait. Even Albus felt himself begin to waver, even though Scorpius wasn’t even looking at him. Eventually, the two girls did cave under the pressure of the stare-down , and made the way together toward a certain stone, a good three feet away from where Rose had been looking for it.

“Severus,” the twins said simultaneously, and the wall opened up to allow them into the Common Room.

Even after the Pucey girls were gone, there was a long moment of silence in the dungeon corridor. Albus squirmed where he stood, grinding his teeth and scratching at the sleeves of his robes, while Rose seemed to be treating the scene more or less like that of an academic observer, quietly watching the whole scene unfold with quiet cautiousness. Scorpius, however, was the only one of them who stood completely at ease. In fact, he even seemed annoyed, regarding the two visitors as uninvited company.

“Merlin, those Pucey girls give me the creeps!” Scorpius muttered, more to himself than to his company. “Is this important?” Scorpius turned to Albus and Rose and asked in a flat tone, as though he couldn’t have cared whether or not the two of them were there, yet couldn’t wait for them to leave either.

There was a certain level of unease among the three students. It certainly didn’t seem like the kind of way that friends should behave around one another. But were they even friends? That still seemed to be unclear at the moment.

“Myrtle wants to have a meeting!” Albus blurted out before he knew what he was saying. He still couldn’t help but feel somewhat intimidated by the early exchange between Scorpius and the Pucey twins.

Yet still, Scorpius refused to show any signs of stress or worry. “So what? We all want things. I want a new racing broom for Christmas, and I also want pancakes for breakfast tomorrow. Excuse me if I’m not in that much of a hurry to-”

“She could go to a professor,” Rose explained, as though Scorpius should have been able to figure this out for himself, “and then we’ll be in trouble for being out of bed at night and for lying about it.”

Now Scorpius was frightened. His face lost what little pale coloring it had and he began shaking where he stood. One hand reached up to grab at his own hair while the other hand’s fingers tapped against his arms. His eyes held a deep look of panicked concentration, as though his mind were racing to come up with an idea; any idea.

“The Halloween Feast,” Scorpius said finally, appearing to calm down as he spoke more and more. “It’s going to happen this Friday. The entire school will be there, students and teachers both. That means that no one will be out in the corridors, and, moreover, no one to go looking for us.”

“But what are we going to talk about?” Rose interjected. “She wants a meeting; we have to talk about something!”

“We started this whole ScoRA thing without even trying,” Scorpius argued back. “Don’t you think we could run our way through one little meeting if we put our minds to it? We have this one little meeting, we bide our time until we have decided that the school doesn’t need us anymore, and we ‘disbar’; get it?”

Rose seemed to pout at Scorpius answer gave her, as though the very sound of his reasoning annoyed her to no end; but Albus seemed to feel merely relieved at the materialization of Scorpius’ plan. He had been worried about this whole “secret society” ever sense it had been accidentally formed; how they would keep any of their classmates from finding out, how they would keep Myrtle from going to the professors, and how they would be able to keep this thing together when the three of them were barely acquaintances. He would be glad to see it finally end.

“Well,” Scorpius finally spoke up after yet another moment of awkward silence, “you two know how we’re going to solve this. You can leave now; I have a composition I need to finish before the night is over.”

Despite the relief that Albus felt from Scorpius’ plan, he couldn’t help feeling slightly confused over his behavior. The night of the Erkling, after nearly all being killed together, it almost seemed like they had regarded each other as friends. Yet here, talking in the corridors weeks after the incident, Scorpius seemed to be acknowledging them with even less warmth than he had that first day on the train. It was almost as though he were trying to forget what they had been through together.

“Um, Scorpius,” Albus spoke up before he and Rose made their way towards the stairs, “Rose and I are just going to dinner. Do you want to come eat with us?”

“I don’t think so,” Scorpius answered without making eye contact, his gazed fixed on the stone that opened to the Slytherin Common Room. “Severus.”

Once again, the stone wall shifted open, and Scorpius disappeared down into the Slytherin dormitories, leaving Albus and Rose to contemplate his behavior and their so-called friendship.

 

*****

 

Black and orange banners, balloons, and candle-lit, floating pumpkins decorated the Great Hall the night of the Halloween Feast. A band made up of Hogwarts fifth-years played songs that no one knew the words to, and eventually became ignored. It was one of the biggest festivities of the year, and every student was there.

But at the Gryffindor, Albus Potter alternated between looking over his shoulder at the Slytherin table and peeking over heads to the Ravenclaw table. Scorpius sat as close to the floor as the first years were allowed, watching for anyone about to turn the corner into the Great Hall. Rose kept her eyes on the party as a whole, waiting for the first opportunity they had to sneak out. Albus, in the middle, acted as the messenger between the two of them; and a type of lookout himself…

James and Fred stared innocently down at their plates, every now and then glancing at each other and Roxanne a few seats down. They were staring to get anxious; it wouldn’t be much longer now.

On a family trip to the United States, James and Fred learned that many teenagers celebrated the holiday by engaging in random acts of vandalism. A tradition that they celebrated to the fullest extent every year since they had been admitted to Hogwarts, and that Roxanne was now a full participant in. What also made the tradition something to be feared was that the planned prank was held under the strictest of confidence, so there was never any clue as to what it was going to be. At least not until the owl came from the headmaster.

POP! POP! POP! POP! POP!

One by one, the balloons in the Great Hall burst; the orange balloons splattering anyone near with pumpkin juice and the black ones splattering ink.

POP! POP! POP! POP!

Screams echoed through the Great Hall as the students and staff became stained and soaked. In a not so orderly fashion, every student pushed and shoved as they tried to the fight their way towards the door while the professor shouted futile orders for single files. This was the moment that Albus and the others had been waiting for; with every student the school running in a hundred different directions, no one would notice three first-years slip of to the girls’ bathroom.

While the prefects ran in every direction searching for the scattered Gryffindors, Albus used the opportunity to sneak up the stairs, hidden among a group of Ravenclaw boys. The didn’t notice him as he hid along side them, and didn’t even noticed when he bolted off in the opposite direction.

On he finally reached the bathroom door, his hand rested briefly on the door handle as he took a deep, reassuring breath, trying to suppress his growing anxieties about the upcoming meeting. What exactly it was that he was afraid of, he had no idea. It all just seemed to be too easy, how they were going to put an end to this whole mess. When he finally felt somewhat relaxed, he shut his eyes and pushed the door open

“It’s about time you showed up!” a sharp voice shrieked from behind him, causing him to nearly jump out of his robes.

Scorpius and rose were already waiting for them, Rose pacing across the stone floor. Floating just above the bathroom stalls was Moaning Myrtle, who seemed to be the most impatient one in the room.

“Sorry,” Albus apologized; trying to remember the façade they had created that night before. “Let the first meeting of the Arcane ScoRA come to order!”


	6. Chapter 6 The Doxy Swarm

 

Chapter 6  
The Doxy Swarm

 

“Please,” Albus instructed to the small gathering before him, “everyone sit.”

Scorpius and Rose looked to one another, as though searching for some clue of how to behave. But eventually, the two took their seats on the damp tile floor, eyes glancing upwards to watch Moaning Myrtle, making sure she remained convinced of the ruse.

“Okay,” Albus began, first taking a deep breath to calm his rattled nerves. “So, an Erkling didn’t just wander into the school by itself. How could it have gotten into the corridor?”

Rose and Scorpius remained silent, trusting themselves to meet each other’s gaze. But the act had to keep going, so Albus ploughed onwards. It was starting to feel more like Albus was talking to himself rather than having a meeting.

“It’s possible that Peeves let it in,” Albus suggested, “as sort of a pre-Halloween prank; my cousins say that he pulls stunts like this near every year…it could’ve also been Fred and James behind this…”

“I don’t think James and Fred would do something like _that,_ ” Rose spoke up suddenly. “They might be immature jerks, but I don’t think they’d do something that could actually get people killed.”

“And Peeves is a poltergeist, so he isn’t really capable of using magic,” Scorpius added. “Did either of you know that Erklings are only native to Germany, so that whoever did let that thing in would have had to transport it here?”

Albus shook his head slowly while Myrtle circled around their heads, listening intently to every word spoken.

“Or that the last reported Erkling attack on a human was in 1912, and that the German Ministry of Magic has been keeping tabs on their population ever since?”

Albus continued to shake his head, but he noticed Rose beginning to purse her lips together tightly. This had been a typical Rose expression, usually only brought out by Victoire or Dominique when they were younger, whenever Rose felt her intelligence was being insulted. It wasn’t a very hard thing to do, to make Rose feel insulted, but the condescending tone Scorpius used as he spoke would have been enough to get to even the most level-headed person.

“And a person would have to collect a large amount of Chizpurfles and bring them all together for an infestation as huge as the one we had that day in Potions,” Scorpius took his turn to speak. “Maybe whoever was responsible for the Erkling is the same person who collected all those pests.”

“Wait, go back,” Rose stopped him. “What happened in your Potions class?”

In a bored, drawling tone, Scorpius recounted the events of the day’s Potions lesson, thankfully leaving out the fight between Albus and himself.

“You didn’t know?” Albus asked, noticing that the conversation was begin to lose the rehearsed feel it had started with and had begun to sound like a real exchange of words.

“No!” Rose exclaimed, shocked. “Nobody in Ravenclaw has been talking about it. And if there’s gossip to be heard, it’s the girls in my House who will be saying it.”

“Well, think about it,” Scorpius said. “The other Houses don’t talk to each other as is, and all the years pretty much keep to themselves…”

“And other first and fourth-year Gryffindors and Slytherins all take Potions together anyway,” Albus expanded, “so the only way anyone else would know is if the teachers had told them.”

“Why would they?” Rose shrugged her shoulders. “Chizpurfles go after potion ingredients; it’s what they do. Don’t you remember the awful infestation that Grandma Weasley’s place had a few years ago, Rosie?”

“An infestation is one thing, Albus,” Scorpius interrupted, “but you were there. What happened that day was not normal. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of those things in there. It was a carpet of them, for Merlin’s sake! Even Professor Vhartan was freaked out; what does that tell you?”

“Chizpurfles by themselves aren’t out of the ordinary,” Rose agreed “But I’ve been listening in on the Care of Magical Creatures N.E.W.T. students for ages now. I’m learning pretty much everything there is to know about magical creatures, and-”

Albus stopped listening to Rose’s words and instead chose to watch her and Scorpius’ banter. Rose’s hands were moving animatedly and Scorpius remaining still and composed. Rose seemed to be becoming more and more excited the longer she spoke, but Scorpius just kept shaking his head at the end of her every sentence and keeping his tone flat. Whatever their conversation was, it was anything but fake. Almost as though they had forgotten this whole ‘Arcane ScoRA’ business was all a stunt to keep Moaning Myrtle from running to the teachers.

“Either one of these incidents by themselves _could_ be passed off as random.” Albus finally started paying attention to Rose’s actual words again. “But the two of them occurring within barely a week of each other…I smell a rat.”

“You _smell_ a conspiracy, Weasley,” Scorpius snapped back. “You’ve spent your entire life hearing your parents and your relatives talk about their days of saving the world, so you’ve learn to see a plot in every little bump in the night.”

“Isn’t that what the Arcane ScoRA exists for, _Malfoy_?” Rose answered. “To make sure the bumps in the night really are just bumps in the night?”

“There is n-”

Scorpius was able to stop himself from finishing his sentence just in the nick of time.

He finally settled on, “You can’t prove it is!”

“And you can’t prove it isn’t!”

Albus could have warned Scorpius that there was no out-arguing Rose Weasley, but it looked as though he was learning that lesson on his own.

What was shocking Albus the most, though, was how their imaginary society had begun to take on a mind and will of its own. Certainly Scorpius still though of it as only a means to keep from being expelled, but Albus could tell that it was already becoming something much more to Rose. It was almost as though it were becoming more of a means of carrying on a legacy. And if that was the case, then it was Albus’ legacy too.

“We’re not going to be moving on from this point tonight,” Scorpius said in a resigned tone, relaxing his previously stiff posture. “We should go back to bed.”

Without another word, Scorpius pushed himself up off the floor. He didn’t make a move for the door, though, he just seemed more interested in getting away from Rose and her ideas of a conspiracy.

“So what do we do?” Albus turned to his cousin.

“We wait to be proven,” she answered. “Right or wrong.”

 

* * *

 

The three students stood together in silence for the remainder of their time together, barely looking at one another. Albus shuffled his feet against the tile floor, but nearly felt his heart jump out of his chest when Moaning Myrtle rose up through the floor, not three inches from the end of his shoes.

“It’s clear on the way to Slytherin,” she informed him, after waiting for Albus to catch his breath.

“Alright, Scorpius,” Rose said with a slight push against his shoulder. “Go!”

Scorpius stumbled, but took the time to glare at Rose, who only glared right back, before racing out the door. Albus could hear Scorpius’ footsteps tread softly at first, but then become louder and less weary the further away he got.

“I didn’t see anyone around Gryffindor or Ravenclaw,” Myrtle informed Albus and Rose once they felt Scorpius had had enough time to get away. “But I can check again if you’re worried.”

“We’re fine,” Rose answered shortly, grabbing Albus by the arm and dragging him towards the door. “We’re set. Thank you for all your help, Myrtle.”

And with that, still dragging Albus by the sleeve of his robes like a ragdoll, she led him down the corridor, not nearly as carefully as they had been when they had first snuck to the bathroom. At first, Albus believed it to be out of desire to get back to her dormitory before getting caught. But the further away from Myrtle’s bathroom the two of them got, the more Rose’s previous excitement began to return.

“I can’t believe all this! Can you, Albus?” She spoke at a near-rabid pace. “I mean, before we left for school, my dad sat me down and told me all about how you and I were going to have the normal, boring school years that everyone is supposed to have, and that how he, my mum, and all our aunt and uncles were never going to know what that was like. But now—now were going to-”

Albus barely listened to his cousin speak. She was going so fast that he could tell if her fast tone was coming from excitement or from worry. The two seemed to coincide in the mind of Rose Weasley. And when they did, Rose became this strange new creature who needed to speak the way other people needed to breathe. It was almost like a grease fire in a way; it could not be put out, one simply had to let it burn itself out.

“Albus, Rose,” a familiar voice in an unfamiliarly harsh, authoritative tone called out to them. “Where have you two been?”

Of course, sometimes an outside force, if it proved strong enough, could prove enough to stop these bouts of rambling speech.

Albus and Rose both cringed, but the simultaneous action did not stop the two of them from being spun around and brought face to face with the furious glare of Victoire Weasley. At home or at any other Weasley family gathering, Victoire was no force to be reckoned with, as rare as her wrath might be. But here at Hogwarts, were she was Head Girl and held real authority over the lives of her younger cousins, the very thought made a chill go through Albus’ soul.

Towering from a height much greater than Albus had recalled from before, Victoire stood above the two younger children with her arms crossed in front of her and a stone-cold quality in her clear blue eyes.

“I suppose there will be a wonderful story behind this,” Victoire said, her voice low and deadly sounding, “and I’m certain that James and Fred have made sure you are both very well rehearsed.”

“You’re too hard on those two,” a kinder, but still wary voice spoke up from behind Victoire. “If a phoenix died in flight and crashed through one of the Great Hall windows, you would somehow find a way for it to be Fred and James’ fault.”

Albus had never seen the girl standing behind his cousin before, but James’ letters home gave him a fairly good idea of who she was. This was Theresa Fatone, a Hufflepuff seventh year who had been Victore’s best friend since their first year. She was a heavy-set girl who was far from being lovely in the sense that Albus’ cousin was. Albus knew it was horrible to think such things about a person, but he couldn’t help it if they were true.

“Did you honestly believe I wouldn’t notice if the two of you didn’t show up to one of the biggest feasts of the year?”

Victoire’s shrill, angry voice brought Albus out of his own thoughts and back to the deep pit of trouble he and Rose were now in.

“Since you two are my family, I’ll make this simple for you,” Victoire informed them sternly. “I’m going to give you till the count of three to tell me who you’re wandering the halls this late at night. One…”

Albus didn’t move. He felt a little nervous, testing his older cousin’s authority like this, but Rose stood behind him, strong and steady. And if it ever did come down to a fight between the two girls, Albus was confident that Rose would walk away victorious with a fistful of veela-witch hair to prove it.

“Two…”

Still, neither of the children moved. Albus shuffled his feet and Rose stuck out her chin defiantly, as though she were daring Victoire to do her worst.

“Two and a half…”

“Some Head Girl you are, Weasley,” came a sneer at the end of the corridor.

Albus had to strain his eyesight to see into the shadows and the figure of the voice’s owner that lurked there: her hair and eyes were so black that she could have easily stay hidden in the shadows for hours, had she made no sound. But as she sauntered out into the light, she could no longer be described as anything other than outstanding. She was quite lovely, her dark beauty nearly rivaling Victoire’s veela inheritance.

“Can’t find it in your own abilities to bring first-years to a Halloween party?” she went on. “How poor of a leader do you have to be to lure children away from caramel apples and candy corn?”

A momentary glance away from Victoire brought the girls attention downwards towards Albus. A sly sort of smile spread across her face, the kind of smile Albus was certain the foxes in fairy tales took on just before they ate the adorable little animal.

“Well, aren’t you the cute one.” She smiled that same smile as she ran a cold hand across Albus’ cheek. “My name is Jocelyn. Can you tell me your name?”

Even though this girl’s, Jocelyn’s, words bayed him to talk, the intense gaze in her pitch-black eyes held his voice captive in his throat. From the small smile that appeared across her lips, Albus could tell that she knew what was happening, she was even enjoying it. This girl was like a mean child who would set a fairy free only to capture it again after it had only flown a few feet.

“Aw, too shy to talk?” she cooed in a voice dripping with sweet venom. “ _You_ are even more adorable than I thought.

“Or maybe you just let the little yappy one do all your talking for you?” she pondered aloud, casting Rose with same disgusted look one might have towards a crushed beetle.

“Can’t even keep your own relatives in line?” Jocelyn asked, turning her attention to Victoire. “I don’t know what the professors were thinking when they thought you capable of being responsible for the whole school.”

“This doesn’t concern you, Dale!”

Jocelyn clucked her tone in disapproval. “Now, Victoire, as seventh-years in positions of power, don’t you think it is our duty to be civil towards one another? You’ll set a bad example for the children.”

Jocelyn’s dark eyes flicked down to the red and gold badge on Victoire’s chest and then back up to look her in the eyes.

“I would have thought that Head Girl badge you’re so proud of actually meant something to you.”

“At least Victoire’s badge actually means something!” Theresa spoke up, though still lingering back behind her friend.

Like a provoked snake, Jocelyn snapped her gaze across to Theresa. Albus expected her to be angry, but instead, her expression was almost happy. As though responding to Theresa was what she had wanted all along and had simply been waiting for an excuse.

She took her time answering, twisting a long, black strand of hair through her dexterous fingers, “Yes, and I’m going to take popularity advice from Theresa _Fat-One_.” She spoke in that Slytherin drawl that all its members seemed to be capable of. “You know, there are a couple of Chasers on my team that pal around with a girl a lot like you, Fat-One. They call her their ‘boost’, because whenever the boys see her, everyone else seems so much more beautiful and interesting by comparison.”

Once she was confident that Theresa had been beaten down, she turned her attentions back to Victoire.

“What I’ve never been able to figure is why, Victoire ‘The Veela’ Weasley, Hogwarts’ favorite half-breed, would even need a ‘boost’ friend.”

Theresa slinked back, almost like a whipped puppy, but Victoire’s reaction was one of blazing rage; turning the famous Weasley red featured both in their hair and their tempers.

“Twenty points from Slytherin, Dale!”

Even in the face of Victoire’s anger, Jocelyn didn’t so much as flinch.

“Ouch,” she drawled. “That hurt, Weasley.”

“I’d better go,” Jocelyn said, slinking her way towards the Slytherin dungeons. “I must get back to the dormitories before the Slytherin first-years start causing as much trouble as the Gryffindors.”

But before lurking back into the darkness, she ran her hand across Albus’ unruly mop of black hair.

“Bye-bye, cutie pie,” she drawled, ruffling Albus’ already messy hair as she passed.

And so, the sweet venom girl known as Jocelyn Dale, disappeared down the dungeon staircase and back into the shadows. Albus had noticed before that the staircase had a terrible echo. This sound soon surfaced once again in the form of what sounded like a dragged out scream at a decibel too low to have been authentic.

“Did that girl just _howl_?” exclaimed Rose, looking ready to storm down the dungeon stairs after the noise.

“We’re leaving, Rose!” Victoire told her cousin, grabbing her roughly by the back of her robes and dragging Rose behind her.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Victoire,” Theresa called out to them before she faded from sight, down towards the Hufflepuff common room.

Rose stumbled as she struggled to keep up with their older cousin while at the same time walking backwards. Albus could understand why Victoire was so angry and how Jocelyn knew such a random action would infuriate her so. Victoire’s dad, their uncle Bill, suffered from lycathropy, not enough so that he would become a werewolf at every full moon, but he did have an unusual taste for rare steaks and an extremely strong sense of smell, along with the unusual ability to bond with any canine that came their way. His face was also horribly scarred from the encounter with the werewolf that had given him the disease, not something that could be as easily overlooked as some of his other symptoms.

Not only that, but it also happened to be common knowledge that Victoire had been seeing Teddy Lupin ever since her fourth year, whose father actually _had_ been a werewolf. This, possibly, was the reason that Victoire’s anger was always on breaking point – she constantly had to put up with the taunting of her fellow students.

“Here’s your door, Rose,” Victoire said through clenched teeth, as though it were taking all her willpower not to scream. Violently, she threw Rose out of her tight grip, nearly hurling the redheaded girl against the wall. But although she stumbled, Rose finally steadied herself just in time to meet with the knocker for the riddle that would allow her into her common room.

“ _Mountains will crumble and temples will fall, and no man can survive its endless call_ ,” the bronze knocker spoke. “ _What is it?_ ”

“Time,” Rose answered effortlessly.

“ _Correct,_ ” the knocker answered, opening the door for her.

“Life gets complicated when you get old, doesn’t it, Victoire?” Albus asked his older cousin once Rose was gone.

“Yes, it does, Albus,” she answered. But Albus knew they were thinking of very different things.

 

* * *

 

_Thump, thump, thump…_

Albus opened his eyes a crack and glanced around the room. Everything was still and, for the most part, quiet. To his left, Damien slept with his arm tossed over his head, and to his right, Simon snored at a volume that Albus had usually been able to ignore. But clearly, no one in the room was awake this early on a Saturday morning. Thoroughly convinced of this reasoning, Albus shut his eyes and tried to drift back to sleep.

“Get the lead out of your shoes, Potter!”

“I’m moving as fast as I can, Corner!”

These shouts gave way to more shouting from other unseen owners of voices, giving no signal of stopping or weakening. Giving up on returning to the place of sleep, Albus kicked the covers back and pulled himself out of bed. His bare feet made no sound as he made his way across the floor, not one of his roommates stirring as he left.

Once at the bottom of the staircase, a racing sea of crimson robes rushed back and forth, shouting advice and insults at each other. Even though it was a spectacle Albus had never seen before, he needed no one to tell him what it was: the Gryffindor Quidditch team, up before everyone else in the school preparing for the first match of the year. Albus had nearly forgotten all about it, despite the fact that the entire house had been buzzing about it for weeks. He had had much bigger things on his mind.

“What going on?” Albus called over the collective noise of the team.

“Get lost, runt!” James shouted as he tied his boots, although he didn’t even bother to look at his younger brother.

“Potter!” a taller fifth year girl with a short, pixie haircut scolded, whacking James on the back of the head. “Don’t talk to your little brother like that!

“We’re sorry we woke you up, Albus.” The girl’s voice became a lot more gentle. “We’re just doing some last minutes drills before the match this afternoon. You can go back to bed.”

“No, no, Albus.” Roxannne stood up and stopped him before he could even turn to start back up the stairs. “If you go back to bed, you’ll never get to the game early enough to get good seats. First match of the season, not to mention Gryffindor vs. Slytherin, it’s going to draw a huge crowd.”

“Albus is still in his first year, Tracy,” Louis, a Chaser, just like Roxanne, spoke up. “So he doesn’t know these things yet.”

“Oh, my little brother is a first-year too,” the team captain, Tracy remarked. “Eli Corner in Ravenclaw; do you know him?”

“I’m sorry,” Albus apologized for not recognizing the name. “I don’t know him.”

“Hmm, Eli’s always been a shy little thing. I guess that’s why he’s not in Gryffindor,” Tracy mused as she gathered up some idle Quidditch equipment. “But you make sure you stop by the Ravenclaw stand and have your cousin introduce you.”

Albus nodded, even though silently he told himself he was too old for ‘play dates’. But this girl had gotten James to back off of him before any real abuse started, so he told himself he would be polite.

“When is Dugan going to be getting his last bones out of bed?” Roxanne remarked suddenly.

“Maddox isn’t going to be playing today,” Tracy grumbled, her mood shifting suddenly. “Mr. Dugan just _had_ to mouth off to the captain of the Slytherin team in plain view of Professor Hardarse, so he’s out of the game for the day.”

“He called her a Blast-ended Skank!” Fred snickered, causing James and every other boy on the team to laugh under their breath.

“That’s right, Fred Weasley! You just laugh it up!” Tracy shouted at her team Beater. “It is absolutely hilarious that we lost our team’s Keeper and now we have to dip into the reserve pool for a replacement!

“I’ll tell you what, though, Albus.” Tracy stopped herself before leading the team out of the common room. “Before you go to meet up with your friends, why don’t you come down on the field with the team?”

“Okay,” Albus answered, not telling Tracy that he didn’t play Quidditch, and hadn’t even decided if he would be going to the match today. He could hardly refuse to go now, though.

“Great,” she remarked happily. “We’d better get a move on. And, Albus, you go back upstairs and try to get some more sleep. Despite what your cousin says, even the earliest arrivals will not be choosing their seats for hours. You’ll have time to get a few moments rest.”

“Yes,” James followed in a mocking tone, “we wouldn’t want ickie Albie-kins to be all sweepy and cwanky for his vewy first Quidditch game.”

“POTTER!” came a loud yell from Tracy on the stairs.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!”

Once James was gone, Albus found himself smiling. He was beginning to really like this Tracy girl.

 

* * *

 

Albus, once back in bed, watched the sky shift through brilliant shades of scarlet, orange, and pink and the shadows shift across the room before he finally decided he wouldn’t be falling back to sleep. Making his way gingerly across the stone floor, he pulled on the clothes from the night before, as well as shucking his winter cloak and wrapping his scarlet and gold scarf tightly around him to guard against the early November chill.

Albus left the boys’ dormitory and eventually the Gryffindor tower, finding himself walking into a scene he never believed he would ever see: a silent Hogwarts. Save for the occasional prefect, and Nearly-Headless Nick muttering some bitter rant that Albus could not distinguish. The corridors were completely empty; so quiet, Albus was sure he could hear the tiny feet of mice racing across the floor above him.

The early morning dew soaked into the leather of his shoes. The warmth of the sun had yet to grace the school grounds, Albus noted, hugging his cloak tightly around him. Despite all this, it felt wonderful to be outside. The air was delightfully crisp and the soft scent of fresh grass lingered on it. The still rising sun left the outside world in a glow that no form of magic could ever bring inside the dreary castle walls.

Etched into the Hogwarts skyline, the Quidditch stadium was a most impressive construction. Tall, pillared stands offered the spectators a magnificent aerial view that rivaled some professional stadiums (at least according to his mother). The goal posts stood at near eye level with the seats, forcing the players to compete dozens of feet above the ground. The idea of it made Albus queasy, but according both his parents, there was no greater rush in all the world. And James had taken the liberty of adding that whenever a player _fell_ from their broom, it was nearly as entertaining to the spectators as watching the game itself. He made sure to emphasize this point with a dramatic fall to the living room floor which their mother didn’t find amusing, but that Albus had heard their father snicker at behind his hand.

Even before entering the stadium, Albus could make out the flashes of scarlet that were the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Louis and Roxanne practiced some sort of agility drill, racing over and under one another in complicated loops. Fred and the other Beater, a girl with hair tied back painfully tight, smacked a Muggle football back and forth, caught in some game where the two tried desperately to keep the ball from losing any altitude.

Another girl whom Albus was not familiar with flew lazy laps around the Gryffindor goal. She must have been the reserve Keeper that Tracy had been talking about in the common room. As Albus watched, he began to notice that the girl’s slow pace didn’t stem from a lack of energy, but from pure effort to stay on her broom. Several times, Albus watched the girl shake, shriek, and then clutch at her broom with both hands while on the verge of crying. No wonder Tracy wasn’t happy!

It wasn’t until Albus got inside, though, that he finally did find Tracy practicing with his brother. From the deep gulps of breath James was already taking, it was a clearly a brutal session; no doubt Tracy’s idea of punishing James for this morning’s behavior, which Albus had come to see as normal interaction between the two of them. What the drill entailed of Tracy tossing three Muggle golf balls into the air at a time and James having to catch every single one of them before gravity took effect and they began plummeting back to the turf. And from the frantic way James raced to catch them, Albus didn’t feel he wanted to know what his brother would be forced to do if he missed any of them.

The damp earth squished under Albus’ shoes, causing Tracy to turn in the direction of the noise.

“Potter, take five!” Tracy ordered before making her way over to Albus, who watched his brother simply drop to the ground, making no attempt to get up.

“Albus,” she greeted him with a jovial tone, “I’m glad you made it; and so early too. You must really be stoked for the match today.”

Albus nodded in a distracted sort of way, his eyes moving past Tracy to look at his brother, who still hadn’t gotten up off the ground. Despite everything James had ever done to him in his short life, he still hoped his older brother wasn’t dead. There was nothing like a dead sibling to ruin the Christmas holidays.

“Oh, don’t worry about him,” Tracy assured him. “Your brother is a bit of a drama queen.”

To illustrate this, Tracy made her way towards James with Albus following closely at her heels. When she reached his side, Tracy expressed her sympathies for James Potter in the form of a swift kick to his side.

“Suck it up, Potter,” Tracy said sternly as James groaned. “On your feet before I put your little brother on your broom and let _him_ Seek for the game.”

Although reluctant, those words were what it finally took to get James up off the turf and onto his feet. He glared at his younger brother, knowing that Albus was at least partially responsible for Tracy’s treatment of him. Albus couldn’t help but answer with a smirk. Tracy Corner seemed to be one of those people with the rare ability to make James do as he was told. To make things even better, she had taken an instant liking to Albus. Even though he had no idea of what he had done to earn such fast favor with the Gryffindor captain, he did know that he would be using every ounce of it to his full advantage.

“Not bad, eh?” Tracy remarked, gesturing up towards the practicing players of the team. “Do you have a favorite position?”

Albus shook his head no. He knew Tracy had meant his favorite position to play, and he didn’t have one, mostly because he didn’t care for _playing_ Quidditch as much as he did for watching it. He did love the game, though. From even before he could remember, Albus’ whole family had followed the professional Quidditch season, taking advantage of his mother’s special privileges as a member of the press and former Chaser for the Holyhead Harpies.

Guiltily, Albus admitted to himself that he had not been fully honest with Rose and Scorpius about his inability to fly on the night of the Erkling attack. With parents as heavily involved with the game of Quidditch as Harry and Ginny Potter, they would never have allowed one of their children to go through life without learning how to ride a broom.

Though Albus did seem to get passed over on a few things that his parents had paid more attention to with James and Lily, flying lessons being one of them. His Grandma Weasley called it the middle child syndrome. James had gotten a toy broom for his first birthday, but one windy day, after he fell off of the broom and into one of the neighbor’s swimming pool, nearly drowning, his mother declared that all the Potter children were going to learn how to walk, swim, and tuck-and-roll before they would be allowed on a broom. Still, after Albus had learned to do all these things, his mum was still wary of allowing Albus anywhere near a broom; (though his dad still snuck him out for rides on his old Firebolt whenever he thought they could get away with it). The only reason Lily had learned to fly was because one day, the two-year-old toddler hand wandered into the garden shed, found James’ old toy broom, and began racing laps around the yard before their mother could wake up and stop her.

Somehow, though, because his brother and sister had both learned to fly on their own, the family had just never gotten around to teaching him.

“Well, you’d better make up your mind soon,” Tracy told him. “You’ll be old enough for Quidditch trials before you know it, and I’m going to be losing a fair amount of players in the coming years.”

Before Albus could repeat all his previous thoughts aloud for the Gryffindor captain, a velvety voice interrupted, “Scrounging through the talent pool already, Corner?”

Albus recognized the source of the voice, and apparently, so did Tracy: she had her expression changed to one of animosity and annoyance.

“At least Gryffindor _has_ a talent pool, Dale,” she remarked without even turning around. “I saw that inbred little gaggle of first-years you had coming into your House at the feast.”

Tracy spun around, and like her little shadow, Albus did too. Standing before them was a group of seven emerald-robed figures, brooms in hands and smirks on faces. And towering above them all, the same captain’s badge that Albus had seen the night before gleaming on her chest, was Jocelyn Dale.

“Oh, look who it is,” she remarked coyly, stepping away from the group. “Little cutie-pie Potter!”

Just like the night before, she reached out to stroke his hair, like he was a puppy. The older girl’s touch was slowly becoming one that made his skin crawl

“I might have thought you’d be drawn to this little doll, Corner,” Jocelyn said as she returned her hand to her side. “I know I certainly was.”

Albus retreated closer to Tracy, again behaving like the puppy Jocelyn seemed to believe he was.

“Too bad not enough of his ancestors were brother and sister,” Tracy shot back. “Then maybe he would have ended up wearing green.”

Jocelyn didn’t laugh this time. This time she glared, an acid glare that could have pushed any first year to the point of tears. It even seemed to scare a few of her fellow teammates.

“Go to hell, Corner,” she hissed.

“After you,” Tracy answered back.

Not being the type to slink away, Jocelyn led the rest of her team up into the air and began working them through their drills, shouting abuses and profanities, at least, that’s what Albus believed the muffled sounds to be, anyway. It was hard to tell from so far down on the ground.

“Oh, this is going to be quite a show,” Tracy said in a hushed tone, as she watched the furious Slytherin captain.

 

* * *

 

Standing opposite one another, ruby and emerald, the two Quidditch teams faced off against one another. The Gryffindor seats were filled with screaming fans, the first-years taking up most of the front ones. Damien Towler’s face was covered with red and gold paint, and Leo Edwin and Gavin Foss shouted at the top of their lungs, louder than anyone else in the stands. The first-year girls all leaned over the edge, displaying a very large ‘Go, Go Gryffindor’ banner.

Next to the Gryffindor seats, in the Slytherin stands, Albus could make out the shape of Scorpius Malfoy in the left corner of the box. There was no paint on his face and no flags in his hand, but he was cheering for his house team just as vigorously as anyone else.

A sudden hand grabbing at his shoulder caused Albus to jump out of acquired reflex, even though he could see Fred and James on the field right in front of him. But when he turned around, he was still shocked by what he saw: Rose Weasley out of the castle, no Gryffindor pride gear, but with her blue-and-bronze Ravenclaw scarf wrapped around her neck.

“Hey, Albus!” She smiled brightly at their cousin. “How long until the game starts?”

“Um,” Albus muttered, still shocked to actually see his cousin, “just a few minutes, I think.”

Rose nodded and elbowed her way up to the front to stand in between Riley St. John and Jodie Canning.

“Let’s go, Gryffindor!” Rose shouted out onto the stadium. “Let’s win this!”

Most of Albus’ cousins were on the Quidditch field, but when he turned, he could see Victoire, Dominique, Molly, and Lucy standing towards the back in just as much shock as Albus had been in. It would appear the Rose’s self-pitying mood was officially over. Rose Weasley was now a happy member of Ravenclaw house, but at the same time, had no problem associating with her all-Gryffindor family.

“Welcome one and all,” came a booming voice from the announcer’s box. “I am Kiki Powell, proud Ravenclaw and your very own Quidditch announcer. It is a lovely day, and I personally don’t feel we could have asked for a more perfect day for the Hogwarts opening match.

The gathering crowd cheered loudly in agreement.

“Madam Wood has asked me to remind the players to make sure that this stays a clean game and that the fans remember to keep their emotions in check. Speak of the devil, here comes Madam Wood onto the field now, with the game balls in hand.”

A collective set of eyes moved downwards, towards the centerline of the field where Madame Wood stood with a leather trunk under one arm. She set it down onto the turf, released one of the straps, and unhooked the latch, releasing the first ball.

“There goes the Snitch…”

Albus watched as both his brother and Jocelyn Dale focused their eyes on the golden, winged ball. Madam Wood then reached down and released two more straps.

“…And the Bludgers…”

Finally, Madam Wood powerfully tossed one last ball into the air.

“The Quaffle is in play…”

A loud whistle blew a shrieking blast that could be heard even above the screams of the crowd.

“…And the game has begun!”

Tracy Corner and one of the Slytherin Chasers raced forwards to grab the Quaffle while other players darted around them.

“And Tracy Corner of Gryffindor intercepts the Quaffle for an early lead for Gryffindor. Just look at her go! _Someone_ has been training over the summer. You know what else she’s been doing this summer? Word has it that she spent _two weeks_ in Paul Harris’ family summer house where they stay every year at the _exact same time_!”

“Kiki’s such an awful gossip,” Rose whispered into Albus’ ear. “It’s all she ever does whenever she’s in the common room.”

“Roxanne Weasley makes an underhand pass to Louis Weasley who throws to Corner – OH! Intercepted by Marie Barton of Slytherin! That has to be a low blow to the Gryffindor team captain. Barton passes to Toby Danes, who is now making a beeline for the goal. With Maddox Dugan out of commission for today’s game, it looks like Slytherin is looking to take the Gryffindor team out hard and fast – but wait, Corner redeems herself and steals the Quaffle back. Back towards the Slytherin goal. Oh, no! That Bludger’s right about to – Never mind, Fred Weasley smacks that baby clear into the stratosphere! Fred Weasley is showing excellent form this year, and the Weasley family Quidditch legacy is still living up to its name. Speaking of family names, let’s see if we can find Seeker James Potter...James Potter…James Potter…Nope, no sign of him right now, people. Let’s get back to the midfield action. Tracy Corner flies for the goal – Wendy Crawford of Slytherin comes in from the side to intercept – but Corner passes back to Roxanne Weasley. Roxanne Weasley flies for the goal, throws it right for Keeper Lucus Taylor’s head…GRYFFINDOR SCORES!”

Loud cheers erupted from the Gryffindor stand, and groans from the Slytherin stands next to them. Hanging over the side of the stands, was a familiar-looking Slytherin with pale blond hair looking as though he were contemplating throwing himself over the edge.

“Chaser Barton takes position of the Quaffle,” Kiki Powell shouted over the crowd. “But Chaser Corner is right on her tail – she’s almost there…I think she’s going to – OH, MERLIN! WHAT ON EARTH IS THAT?”

Albus looked up along with the rest of the crowd to see what was exciting enough to catch the Quidditch announcer’s attention. A large, cloud-like mass had begun to descend onto the field. It buzzed and began to spread off in all directions. The closer it got to the stands, the more Albus began to notice the individual, shiny bodies that made up the mass. Soon, the individual forms began to swoop in on the students, screeching as they got caught in the long hair of girls and squeaking as they were trampled under the feet of boys.

“Players off the field!” Madame Wood shouted, her voice magnified by a voice-enhancing charm as she attempted to fire her wand at the flying pests that rushed all around her. “Players off the field! Spectators, too! We have a Doxy swarm!” Everyone off the field.”

With dozens of hands swatting over their heads, the Gryffindor students made their way towards the staircase in the fashion of a rehearsed fire drill. But still, the Doxies swarmed down to bite at the students, bright purple welts rising on the exposed skin of those who ran out in front of Albus. Worried, he pulled his cloak up over his head, barely leaving enough room to see through. He knew that Doxy bites were poisonous, not to mention horrifically painful, and he had no intention of going through whatever painful antidote it took to cure a Doxy bite.

The first-years, being the ones furthest away from the exits, were the ones the Doxies invested the most time in attacking. Damien’s red and gold face was soon mixed with purple as the Doxies were drawn to the bright colors. The girls all screeched as several of the little creatures swooped down on them and half of them ended up tangled in their hair, biting at their ears.

Older students remained at the exit way, rushing the students, one by one, out of the stadium. By the time Albus and Rose reached the door, they were more or less shove down the stairs and the older students raced to get away from the swarm themselves. Suddenly, at the bottom of the first staircase, Albus couldn’t go forward any further. A hand held him back, gripped by his hood.

Albus, down!” Rose ordered as she yanked him down to the floor while dozens of feet passed over him.

“Rose, what are you thinking?” Albus hissed under his breath, just in case Doxies responded to human voices.

“We have to get rid of them!” Rose insisted as though the reason were obvious.

“And how do you propose that?”

Before Rose could answer, the clicking buzz of flapping wings became louder. At the top of the staircase, Albus could vaguely make out the black bodies that they had been running from. They didn’t appear to see them at first. At least they didn’t until Albus decided on impulse to throw his cloak at the gathering. Now they saw exactly where they were, and Albus had just offered them a plethora of new places where he could be bitten.

“Rose…” he said warily, shuffling backwards until his back was against the wall until there was nowhere else to run.

Without answering, Rose stood to her feet, pulling her wand from her robe pocket and pointed up out one of the small windows and towards the sky with definite purpose.

“ _Adsector Lux_!” Rose screamed as she pointed her wand toward the sky.

An orange, neon-like beam shot from her wand and the light blazed a trail through the sky and soared into the Forbidden Forest. The Doxies flew upward and followed the trailing light as fast as they could.

_Where is my cousin learning all these charms?”_ Albus thought to himself as the Doxies disappeared out of sight.

Rose watched the Doxies race off into the horizon with a triumphant look on her face

“The Arcane ScoRA still lives,” Rose whispered before the two of them followed the other Gryffindors down the stairs.

 

* * *

 

The infirmary was crammed from wall to wall, green robes to the left, and red to the right, with the elderly Madam Pomfrey running herself ragged between the two. The bite marks on Jocelyn’s face had begun to turn purple, and she was screaming about how they burned. James lay in a cot at the far end, but with a very satisfied smile on his face. As Albus had learned from the Gryffindor fans crowding around the hospital wing while he had been out of the stadium, following after Rose and the other Gryffindors, James had spotted the Snitch through the cloud of swarming Doxies.

Ignoring Madame Wood’s orders to dismount their brooms and evacuate, James had flown and towards the golden target. Reaching out and leaning forwards on his broom, James had grabbed the Snitch out of the sky, only to have the small bit of exposed skin on his wrist painfully bitten, the shock of it causing him to fall from his broom. He had to be carried off the field by the less-than-thrilled Slytherin Beater, the Snitch still struggling in his fist.

According to Madam Pomfrey, James had actually been hurt worse from the fall than from the Doxy bite that had caused it. And because Kiki was still in the announcer’s box at the time and had seen the whole thing, Gryffindor had been declared the winners. So in James’ mind, having an arm that was broken in three places was a small price to pay for victory over the Slytherins.

While the students either celebrated victory or anguished over defeat, the teachers rushed in and out of the hospital wing, taking tallies of all the injured and whispering to each other in panicked, hushed tones.

Albus and Rose stayed in the Gryffindor side of the Hospital Wing, seated on Roxanne’s bed. Roxanne had a rather nasty bite on her left forearm, the resulting welt swollen and discolored, but otherwise, their cousin was perfectly fine. Aside from Roxanne and James, no one on the Gryffindor team had been seriously hurt. Fred had taken a Bludger to the stomach when he wasn’t paying attention and Tracy had miscalculated her landing and gotten a few scrapes when she fell from her broom, but neither of them were in hospital beds. Madame Pomfrey made sure to stress how lucky they all were.

“Jocelyn!” a familiar voice shouted from the doorway.

Rose and Albus looked up just in time to see Scorpius race across the infirmary, right to the bedside of Jocelyn Dale. A look of frantic worry appeared on his face which seemed completely out of character for the cool and collected Scorpius Malfoy Albus had come to know.

“Jocelyn, are you okay? Do you want me to write to Aunt Daphne and Uncle Richard?”

“No, Scorpius,” Jocelyn assured him, running her hand through his hair much the same way she had done with Albus. “Don’t you worry about me. I’m fine, really.”

“If you want to worry about something, worry about her pride!”

Albus shifted his eyes back to the Gryffindors. James, propped up against the pillows of his bed, had noticed Jocelyn’s visitor and decided now was the perfect time to add insult to injury.

“A real Seeker never leaves the Snitch flying in the air.”

Jocelyn, wincing from the pain of her welts, pushed herself up so she could look James dead in the eye with that cold Slytherin gaze of hers. Scorpius held tight to her shoulder, as though not sure what else he could do.

“Don’t you dare get cocky, Potter!” Jocelyn shouted back. “No Seeker is capable of anticipating a freak Doxy swarm!”

“Excuses, excuses…”

Rose and Albus pushed themselves off Roxanne’s bedside, leaving the two team Seekers to sort out their little catfight. Scorpius remained with the other Slytherins, resting on the same bedside.

“Scorpius,” Rose hissed in a hushed tone to get his attention, gesturing from the open door.

Finally, she was able to get Scorpius’ attention, and he followed her and Albus out into the corridor. His eyes, though, remained on the worried members of his own house, who raced back and forth between each of the emerald and silver figure on the cots, groaning in pain.

“How do you know Jocelyn Dale?” Rose asked once they were away from the crowd.

“She’s my cousin,” Scorpius explained. “Her mother and my mother are sisters.”

Rose regarded Scorpius with a nearly disgusted look, as though she could not believe he was related to someone as awful as Jocelyn Dale. Yet, Rose had only known Jocelyn half as long as Albus had, so she hadn’t even gotten a real feel for the venomous current that ran deep in the girl.

While his cousin continued to stare in disbelief, Albus looked into the Hospital Wing at the rushing teachers, the crying students, and the bewildered look on Madame Pomfrey’s face; as though she had never encountered anything like this before.

“We’re not disbanded yet, are we?”

“No, Albus,” Scorpius answered, shaking his head, “we are not.”


	7. Chapter 7 Craftsmanship and Techniques

 

Chapter 7  
Craftsmanship and Techniques  
  
  
Frantically, Albus scribbled the answers to his Charms homework as he sat at one of the desks in the school library. The Gryffindors and the Hufflepuffs had just started learning about combining levitation and movement spells in order to move objects through the air. Professor Branstone had moved past drilling them on the basic wand movements for their latest unit and onto situations for which the spells could be applied. Although, the class as a whole had yet to practice any of the spells in a practical sense.  
  
  
 _In a situation in which you find yourself needing to cross a natural opening and the bridge appears too dangerous to cross, what are three spell options you would have to choose from? Please explain the advantages and disadvantages of each spell._  
  
  
Albus quickly scribbled a few spells he could remember off the top of his head, and a few reasons behind each one that he didn’t bother to consult the book for. He still had twenty answers left to look up and less and less time to do it. He had to hurry; the Arcane ScoRA was going to be having yet another meeting in less than an hour. The third one this week, none of which had been conducted in the presence of Moaning Myrtle. Ever since the Doxy incident at the Quidditch match, Rose had slowly been working her way through the Magical Creatures section of the library and Scorpius had been making a point to listen to every piece of gossip that echoed through the Slytherin common room, for everything there was to be heard, would be heard in there, according to Scorpius. Albus would find himself following along with whatever he was needed for, but not to the near rabid degree that Rose was leading them on. Scorpius did not seem nearly as committed as her, but he had yet to say anything to quell the Weasley Ravenclaw.  
  
Whether a desire to follow in the footsteps of their parents or a desire not to have the ordinary, boring school years that everyone seemed to want for them, whatever the Arcane ScoRA had started out to be, it certainly wasn’t that anymore.  
  
“How goes it, Little Potter?”  
  
Albus felt himself jump slightly out of habit, nearly falling backwards out of his chair, but relaxed when he didn’t see the dual forms of James and Fred. Instead, the growingly familiar Maddox Dugan looked down at him through the strands of longish dark hair with a slightly puzzled smile on his face. Not waiting for an invitation, he pulled out the chair next to Albus and took a seat.  
  
“Wow, you _are_ the jumpy one, aren’t you?” Maddox remarked, reclining sideways against the desk. “At any rate, though, how are you?”  
  
The older student asked Albus these questions with a general interest. Also, he didn’t speak to Albus in the condescending tone that so many people used on children without even noticing.  
  
“Alright.” Albus shut his schoolbook and set his wand on the cover.  
  
“Alright?” Maddox questioned jokingly with a raised eyebrow. “Just alright? Or have I come across you on a day where you aren’t in the mood to talk?”  
  
Even though Albus could tell that the older student was just joking around, not even teasing him, he still couldn’t help but feel guilty at the words. Maddox had been so nice to him ever since he had first arrived at Hogwarts: and he was friends with both James and Fred—it would have been so easy for him to follow their lead and tease Albus right along with them. But instead, he treated Albus with the same welcoming attitude he had given to all the other first-years, ignoring the fact that he already knew Albus’ older brother and most of his cousins and the easy prey he could have made.  
  
“I’m sorry you couldn’t play Quidditch on Saturday,” Albus whispered apologetically.  
  
Upon hearing this, instead of feeling sorry for himself, Maddox laughed. Yeah, I heard all about that fiasco. But leave it to James Potter to be able to maneuver his way through a Doxy swarm and still catch the Snitch. At least Gryffindor won in the end. That’s what really matters.”  
  
Then, leaning in close, Maddox whispered, “Besides, you met Jocelyn Dale. Tell me that missing one game of Quidditch isn’t worth being able to call her a Blast-ended Skank to her face.”  
  
At this, Albus, who normally wasn’t one to laugh at people behind their backs, couldn’t help but snicker. Jocelyn Dale _was_ a horrible, horrible human being, who had more than likely never had a day of difficulty or tragedy in her life. She was the type of girl who deserved every word people said about her behind her back; possibly even more.  
  
“What are you working on?” Maddox leaned over to peek at Albus’ composition book. “Charms homework? Does Professor Branstone still have you working on the wand movements, or has she actually started letting you use the spell yet?”  
  
“Still working on the movements.” Albus grabbed his wand so he could illustrate. “Left flick, right flick, arch, and swish.”  
  
Maddox nodded in an attentive manner, but Albus was beginning to notice that his eyes were resting on his wand and not the wielder of it.  
  
“Nice wand,” he remarked with his hand out. “May I?”  
  
This caught Albus somewhat by surprise. At Ollivander’s wand shop, he had received a very long lecture from Ollivander, whom his father had later told him was the nephew of the wandsmith who had sold him his wand, that his wand would be as much a part of him as his hands or his eyes. Later, his parents both made very sure to tell Albus that Ashford Ollivander was a man who seemed to garner entertainment from making new Hogwarts students anxious about their first wands so as to frighten them into taking better care of them so that he would not have to worry about making repairs later. Apparently Rose, his older cousins, and even Teddy had gotten the exact same talk.  
  
Despite his parents stressing not to worry about his wand, saying they were built very durable, still he felt his pulse quicken as he pulled the wand from the pocket of his robes. Somewhat warily, Albus handed the rod over to the older student. Appearing to note his apprehension, Maddox took great care in receiving the wand, handling it carefully in his hands as he examined it.  
  
“Cherry,” he noted. “Very good for Divination spells. The wielders of it tend to be very good at divining and have strong intuition.”  
  
Albus regaled this telling with a healthy dose of disbelief. Him and Divination? It hardly seemed possible. Every single member of his family had made a point of telling him that Divination was a load of hogwash, Aunt Hermione in particular. James, Fred, Molly, and Lucy all took Divination, but this was hardly an indicator of its validity. James had remarked on more than one occasion that old Professor Trelawney’s growing senility made for one of the easiest grades in the school. All you really had to do in order to pass was think of a prediction to make five minutes before class and recite them in a dramatic voice.  
  
But Maddox certainly did seem to speak in a way that suggested he knew what he was talking about.  
  
“What’s the core?” Maddox asked.  
  
“Unicorn hair.”  
  
“Hmm,” Maddox hummed under his breath. “Unicorn wands normally only choose owners who are pure of heart. I guess that means I’m never going to have to worry about you turning me into a rat while I sleep then, right?”  
  
Albus couldn’t help but smile at the joke. Though part of him felt a little disappointed that his wand would not be very suitable for turning _James_ into a rat while she slept.  
  
“Overall, a very good wand for defensive and healing magic,” Maddox finished, handing the wand back to Albus. “It fits you, like most wands fit their owners.”  
  
Albus nodded, noting the observations with a slight shrug of his shoulders. But Maddox wasn’t quite done talking about wands just yet.  
  
“What about that cousin of yours in Ravenclaw, Rose?” he asked. “Do you know what her wand is?”  
  
“Birch,” Albus thought out loud as he tried to remember, “and…phoenix feather, I think.”  
  
“Really?” Maddox remarked, eyebrow slightly raised. “I can understand her Sorting then. Birch wands usually only tend to belong to great thinkers and those of logical mind. And combining it with the phoenix feather also makes it a great wand for defensive and healing magic, just like yours. But it’s also excellent for cleansing and driving out spirits.”  
  
Albus could hardly argue. This definitely sounded like a wand that would choose his cousin. The polite interest he had begun the conversation with was gone, now replaced by a genuine, more rabid interest in learning more that seemed much more characteristic of Rose Weasley than Albus Potter.  
  
“Wicked,” Albus breathed. “My brother’s is Koa and dragon heartstring. What does that mean?”  
  
Once again, a confident, knowing look appeared on Maddox Dugan’s face as he shared the information with the younger Gryffindor. “Koa wands are good for luck spells and charms. They usually choose those who possess an innate lucky streak. And dragon heartstrings are good cores for dueling and casting hexes. No doubt you’ve already experienced these things on the wrong end of that wand.”  
  
“What about you?” Albus’ eyes shifted down to the wand poking out of Maddox’s robes. “What’s your wand made of?”  
  
Without even looking down, he extracted the wand and held it up for Albus to see. It was polished and completely without nicks or scratches that he had seen on the wands of his older cousins. “ _Oak_ and dragon heartstring,” he answered with all the enthusiasm he spoke with towards wands distinctively absent. “But to be perfectly honest, I never felt like it truly fit me like it was supposed to. When I went to Ollivander’s, I barely got a reaction out of it. Of course, it was about the fiftieth wand I tried, so I suppose I was just fed up. Maybe one of these days I’ll go back and see if I can get a different one.  
  
“One that suits me better,” he continued as he pulled the wand away and it disappeared back into his robes pocket. “You know, it might even be that I’ve just changed so much since my first year that my wand just doesn’t respond to me as well as it used to. It’s rare, but it _does_ happen.”  
  
Once the wand was gone, though, all of Maddox’s previous enthusiasm towards the subject of wands returned.  
  
“And it might even be that it’s Ollivander’s technique itself that doesn’t suit me. There are a lot of different techniques for making wands,” he went on to explain. “In America, wands are custom made so they will only work for the person they were originally made for.”  
  
“Whoa,” Albus remarked with a sense of awe. “You sure know a lot about wands. Do want to be a wandsmith?”  
  
Maddox shook his head, casting his eyes down to the desktop as he trailed his fingers across the grain. “Doubtful,” he replied with a tone of resignation. “I don’t think Ollivander’s will close their business, and I don’t like the odds of trying to compete with Britain’s best wandmaker.”  
  
“Albus,” a call came from behind him.  
  
Albus and Maddox turned in unison to see a redheaded, black robe clad figure hunkered down with more books that most would think a child her age would be strong enough to hold. There was Rose, tapping her foot impatiently against the floor and shifting her eyes back and forth between the two boys as though waiting for an explanation. And Maddox seemed to be just a little but intimidated by the young girl staring him down.  
  
“Oh, yes.” Albus suddenly remembered, as the only Weasley not in Gryffindor, that his cousin had never met Maddox. “Rose, this is Maddox Dugan. He’s a fourth-year in my house. Maddox, this is my cousin, Rose Weasley. She’s a first-year.”  
  
Suddenly, recognition dawned as Maddox recalled the near-famous name from the Sorting Ceremony.  
  
“Ah, so this is the notorious Ravenclaw Weasley,” Maddox remarked as he extended his hand towards the younger girl. “I have to say, the way your family talks about you being so different, I was almost expecting to see a third arm growing out of your forehead.”  
  
Albus snickered behind his hand, but, as with most jokes poking fun at her, Rose did not laugh. She looked up at Maddox with a critical look almost never seen on someone as young as her. The young Ravenclaw looked down at his hand as though she expected to be shocked the moment she grabbed it.  
  
“There’s nothing wrong with being intelligent and creative,” Rose answered back in the manner of someone extremely offended.  
  
Maddox raised an eyebrow at the response Albus’ cousin gave him, but did not answer back with any snide remarks or anything else that might have further provoked Rose’s feelings of animosity. He simply kept his hand extended, waiting for the first-year girl in front of him to accept the gesture of friendship. Finally, Rose seemed to understand that Maddox was not going to be frightened away by her, so she begrudgingly extended her hand as well.  
  
“Pleasure,” she muttered dryly as she accepted his hand. But as soon as she pulled it away, Albus could see her fingers twitch, as though she had a compulsive need to wash her hands now.  
  
Suddenly shrugging it off, she shifted her gaze back to her cousin, as though she had never even spoken to Maddox.  
  
“Albus, don’t forget,” Rose reminded him, “we have to meet Scorpius soon, to ‘study’.”  
  
Albus stood, confused, for a moment before he finally remembered what his cousin was talking about. No doubt, having left Scorpius in some corner of the library all by himself, making sure that he knew that Albus was the reason why.  
  
“I’ve…” Albus trailed as he began to follow his cousin, “got to go now.”  
  
“Okay,” Maddox called after him as Albus walked away. “Don’t you get into _too_ much trouble when I’m not watching you.”  
  
Rose, not having waited for her cousin and the older Gryffindor to exchange farewells, was already well on her way out of the study area and about ready to duck behind the Herbology shelves. Desperate to keep up with her, Albus began a swift, stiff shuffle, all the while glancing over his shoulder for Madam Pince, whose advanced age had done nothing to hinder her abilities to track down misbehaving students.  
  
“Rose,” Albus hissed under his breath as his cousin ducked into the stacks. “Rose, please wait!”  
  
Whether an answer to his pleas or her own security they were not being followed, Rose finally slowed to a more comfortable pace. Then, turning towards her heavily-breathing cousin while still continuing ahead, she cast him with an apologetic look.  
  
“I’m sorry, Albus,” she said, her tone then taking a sudden turn, “but maybe you should consider going outside more often.”  
  
In between breaths, Albus glared at the redheaded girl. First it was James who would tease him about this kind of thing, then Lily was just starting to pick it up. Now he was getting the same from Rose, the one person in his family who should understand having a preference of brains over brawns. Alright, maybe for Albus to refer to himself as a brain was a stretch, but Rose was hardly in a position to argue, even if she was clearly more athletic than her cousin.  
  
Suddenly, Rose stopped at the end of the bookshelves, as though she stood at the edge of a whitewater river. With a glace left, right, and then left again, she grabbed Albus by the sleeve of his robes and dragged him across the opening, as though she did not trust him to make it across on his own.  
  
“So who was that Dugan boy you were talking to?” she asked him as they once again resumed a more comfortable pace.  
  
“ _Maddox_ Dugan is a fourth-year Gryffindor,” Albus replied annoyed, believing Rose had not been listening when Maddox had said all this himself. “His father is the Head of your House.”  
  
“Professor Dugan?” Rose said in a noncommittal tone. “It hardly seemed possible.”  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
Rose began her answer with a long winded sigh, as though this were something she really did not want to get into. “Well, Professor Dugan talks with the Ravenclaws a lot about all kinds of things. He’s so well-read, and intelligent, and thoughtful.” Rose paused as her tone change from the praise of her teacher. “While his son…”  
  
Albus raised an eyebrow at the answer his cousin gave. He began to speak, but his voice trailed off when he noticed his cousin’s expression. She kept her eyes on the ground, shifting back and forth, and bit at her bottom lip. This face was as easy for Albus to read as a sign posted on his cousin’s back would have been.  
  
“Rose,” Albus asked, “what do you have against Maddox?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Rose shrugged her shoulders as though she could offer no concrete evidence. “I’m finding I don’t care for _most_ Gryffindor boys.”  
  
Albus shook his head, casting his cousin with the exact same look his father would use on his mother whenever he ran out of things to say. “Rose Weasley, you _are_ a true, blue Ravenclaw!”  
  
Rose giggled under her breath. “Just don’t tell my dad.”   
  


* * *

  
  
  
Hidden towards the back of the library, in between shelves, sat three students, as far away from the rest of the breathing bodies in the library as they could possibly be. The secrecy of their location was believed by Scorpius to be a necessity, him being the one whom had first staked it out.  
  
In a circle of three (more like a triangle, really), they all sat together. Rose had been slowly working her way through a very large stack of books nearly towering over her head. Across from her, Scorpius sat with a quill and composition book in hand, taking notes on anything Rose deemed relevant. Occasionally, he would take a book from Rose’s stack and start reading himself, except as soon as he would set it down, Rose would take it back and start rereading it herself, as though she didn’t trust Scorpius to find the information himself.  
  
Rose’s latest plan for attack was to study any and all strange incidents in wizarding history to see if anything like this had ever happened before. Earlier, when they had first all come together, Scorpius argued that the teacher probably already had all these books memorized, and if there was anything to know, the professors would have probably already realized it.  
  
Then, Albus broke the silence, turning towards Scorpius so he could ask, “Scorpius, what’s your wand made out of?”  
  
“Ash and dragon heartstring,” Scorpius answered over the cover of his book. “Why?”  
  
“I was talking to a housemate about wands just now,” Albus explained. “You can give him any wood and core combination, and he can tell you exactly what kind of wizard will choose it.”  
  
“How fascinating,” Scorpius remarked, going back to hiding behind his book cover, clearly not at all interested.  
  
“Albus,” ordered an increasingly peeved Rose, “focus!”  
  
The order was somewhat confusing, as Albus wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to be doing, which was why he found himself so often interrupting his cousin’s concentration. He didn’t even know what he was supposed to be adding to this session. Rose and Scorpius seemed to have the research down, and would occasionally ask Albus to write something down, but for the most part, he simply sat idle, doing nothing but ‘impeding their progress’, as Rose put it.  
  
Rose stopped thumbing through her book, _Notable Creature Attacks_ , and pointed out something she though might be useful, a habit she had already repeated several times already.  
  
“In 1893, in the United States, a creature called a Deer Woman was brought into the city of New Orleans where she killed several dozen people.”  
  
Albus sat up diligently, waiting to be told whether or not to write something down.  
  
“But, that was only the one creature…”  
  
“…and the person behind it is more than likely dead.” Scorpius finished for her.  
  
So that was a no. Albus sighed and leaned back again the shelves, hoping in the back of his mind that they were sturdy enough to support his weight without falling over like dominos.  
  
“Maybe we should ask Maddox for help,” Albus suggested out of the blue.  
  
The group as a whole said nothing. Rose because she could not believe Albus had suggested this after their talk on the way there, and Scorpius because he had no idea what his friend was talking about.  
  
Scorpius was the first to break the silence. “Who is Maddox?”   
“He’s some kid in Albus’ house,” Rose answered for him. “Pretentious bugger, if you ask me.”  
  
“He is _not_ pretentious! He knows a lot, about all kinds of things,” Albus explained in protest. “He could really help us.”  
  
Ordinarily, Albus would be put off by his cousin’s slight know-it-all attitude, but he wasn’t going to indulge in it when he knew it was flat-out wrong. He knew Maddox a lot better than Rose did. He had been speaking to him ever since school started, and was certain he had a good idea of his character. Rose had known him for about an hour and already seemed to have her mind made up the moment she saw him. Maybe Professor Dugan shared some things with the Ravenclaws that he didn’t with the rest of the student body, but not all parents gloated about their children. And Maddox being in Gryffindor instead of his father’s house would surely have caused some tension.  
  
“How do you know this kid won’t just go running for the closest teacher as soon as you ask him?” Scorpius asked, taking on the roles of devil’s advocate.  
  
“Don’t you remember all the times our wonderful _cousins_ have gone to our parents with things we have done because ‘it was for our own good’?”  
  
Albus could not help backing up against the shelves just a little bit more. He knew his friends had not meant to be intimidating, but he never imagined them getting so defensive at a simple suggestion.  
  
“Well, we’re an organization, let’s vote on it,” Scorpius suggested. “We’re all equal members of the Arcane ScoRA, we should all have an equal say in what happens with it.”  
  
Rose did not skip a step in beginning the so-called election. “All in favor of letting this older Gryffindor in on the Arcane ScoRA?”  
  
Nervously, Albus rose his hand, feeling even though it had already been decided against, he should at least stand by his principles.  
  
“All opposed?”  
  
Rose’s hand went up immediately, and Scorpius’ followed hers not soon after.  
  
“Two to one vote for ney,” Scorpius announced the results in a somewhat formal fashion.  
  
But at two against one, all the trust in Maddox the world had to offer wouldn’t be enough to undo the verdict. So, in a resigned sort of manner, Albus pulled a book from the tall stack beside his cousin and began paging through the picture-less tome, not really able to focus on any of the words.  
  
And once he did, Scorpius and Rose went back to their own readings as though the whole scenario had never happened. A few moments after he did, Rose set her own book down and reached for one of the composition books that held Albus’ homework: History of Magic. With Albus noticing, but barely paying attention, she checked over the answers he had written.  
  
“Albus, why would you write that?” Rose pointed to an answer in his homework. “You wrote down that Britain has a history of allowing wizarding refugees into the countries, but that has never happened in large numbers. Certainly not enough to be considered ‘having a history’.”  
  
“Because I told him to,” Scorpius answered for Albus. “During the French Revolution, when people were having their heads chopped left and right, a group of people from Northern France called the Normandy Party were allowed entry into England. Everyone knows that!”  
  
“No,” Rose argued. “Again, there was a small amount of people who came over, but it was hardly a party.”  
  
“Yes, they did!” Scorpius snapped back. “My grandfather told me that the Malfoy family came to England with the Normandy Party.”  
  
Albus watched as the two supposed friends tore at one another over their schoolwork. He had a hard time they would agree with another on not allowing someone into their organization if they couldn’t even agree on answers for schoolwork. Maybe he would ask Maddox himself…on his own time, of course.


	8. Chapter 8 Planning and Preparations

**Author's Note:** I want to take this oppurtunity to say that the idea for 'guide frogs' is not my own. I am a big fan of a story entitled _Marissa and the Wizards_. It is a fanfic about a magic school in Brazil and students use guide frogs to help them navigate the school, which is a constantly changing maze.

It really is a lovely story and I recommend that everyone who has a chance, read it!

* * *

**Chapter 8  
Planning and Preparations**

 

That latest meeting of the Arcane ScoRA was the last one the three friends had for a very long time. School and other aspects of life completely consumed their time. Then came midyear examinations, which Albus spent the most time of any Gryffindor studying for, preparing himself for the worst.

But even after all the grueling test were done, the Hogwarts students all found themselves occupied yet again, but for a much more welcome reason: Christmas.

Christmas preparations were taking place all over the school, by students and staff alike. In Charms class, Professor Branstone had begun applying their knowledge of levitation spells to helping decorate the castle, the first useful thing they felt like they had done since the school year had started. Professor Patil, who taught a class that no one was sure could be made festive, invited the house elves into the classroom so they could be ‘observed’, although the terms of the project were not very strictly defined. In Transfiguration, even Professor Dugan decided to allow some festive activities. They had been learning the properties of color-changing spells by being given Christmas ornaments to transform. And the best part was it wasn’t graded.

In Potions, things proceeded much the same as they had the rest of the year. No one was shocked.

Finally, the last day of class came, along with Albus’ last class of the term: Herbology. At the end of the school day, the first-year Gryffindor and Hufflepuffs were all in the room before Professor Longbottom, who was easily the favorite teacher of all years. Everyone was excited to see what he had planned

Eventually, five minutes late, Professor Longbottom burst through the greenhouse doors, appearing incredibly frazzled. No one moved from their stool seats, but every student sat a rapt attention, waiting to see what was in store.

“Children,” Professor Longbottom gasped as he rushed along the aisles, “has anyone seen Dolores?”

A few students from Hufflepuff giggled as Professor Longbottom began sweeping through a section of leafy, fern-like plants. Deep down, Albus knew a lot of this was just meant to be an entertaining show for the students in honor of the upcoming break, but that didn’t stop anyone in the room from enjoying it.

Dolores was Professor Longbottom’s pet toad, who was a constant companion in his classes. Well, in truth, this was Dolores VI. Professor Longbottom had named every toad he had ever had in his teaching career Dolores, which he had explained to the student body on more than several dozen occasions. Although most students at Hogwarts could not believe an animal as sweet as Dolores could possibly be named after such a horrible human being.

“Wait a minute.” Professor Longbottom waved his finger jokingly as he reached towards Georgia Ackhart’s hat, promptly lifting it off the top of her head.

Sure enough, perched atop of Georgia’s head, trying to burrow into her hair and hide, was Dolores the toad. Every student in the room started laughing and Georgia’s eyes grew wider and wider, as she slowly began to put the pieces together.

“There you are, Dolores!” he exclaimed. “How did you get under there?”

“Get it off me!” Georgia screeched as she cringed.

Swiftly, he swiped the amphibian from her coppery strands of hair, holding little Dolores safely in his palm.

“You know,” Professor Longbottom told his students as he set Dolores, the toad, on one of the potting tables, “you kids should really show more respect to our amphibian friends. In Brazil, their school corridors change continuously, and the students use guide frogs to help them find their way to class. But if you were ever there, and the guide frogs learned that you were talking this way about members of their families, they might not help you. _Then_ what would you do?”

“Oh, Professor Longbottom,” Leo called up to the front, “don’t waste the entire class period talking about Brazilian frogs!”

“Yeah, no one cares about Brazil!” Gavin agreed. “Tell us a war story!”

“One with the Carrows!” Elle Peakes, who was normally so quiet in class, shouted with enthusiasm. “Or one of the student Death Eaters!”

“You children always want to hear about the Carrows.” Professor Longbottom groaned jokingly. “I don’t know if I have any stories left to tell about them!”

It wasn’t just the Carrows. In only one term, Professor Longbottom had told the first-year the stories of Dolores Umbridge, who tortured the students all through his fifth year, the Triwizard Tournament when he had slipped Harry Potter gillyweed for the second challenge. Albus had to admit to himself that his Herbology teacher still had _any_ stories left to tell at this point.

“But I do have a very good story about Dumbledore’s Army, the resistance I was a part of that I have been saving.”

An excited murmur overtook the class, but eventually settled into complete science.

“You children already know who Severus Snape is, don’t you?”

Most of the heads in the room nodded, but of course, Albus knew who Severus Snape was. He was one of the men he had been named for, after all, but all his life, he felt he had gotten mixed messages about the man. His dad had always told him that his former Potions professor was a great man, a brave man, but would always conveniently leave out any details about what kind of teacher he was.

His uncles Bill and George, however, were more than happy to fill him in on those gaps though. During his teaching career, Professor Snape had been one of the strictest, cruelest teachers Hogwarts had ever known, raining down his wrath especially hard on the Gryffindors. Even Uncle Bill, who had been Head Boy, seemed to carry a special sort of distain for the man.

His mother and Aunt Hermione’s chief concerns, on the other hand, was that Albus would be beaten up every day of his young life for sporting the name Albus Severus Potter. He had been beaten up, yes, but never because of his middle name.

“How about I tell you the story of when I first began to suspect he might not have been as much of a Dark wizard as people gave him credit?”

As though Professor Longbottom even had to ask. Every student in the classroom cheered and raised their hands to show their approval.

“Alright.” Professor Longbottom finally surrendered. “I suppose I should start from the beginning. Lord Voldemort had just taken over the Ministry of Magic, and then, of course, Hogwarts was next to fall under his control. But since he couldn’t be everywhere at once, he put a man in charge that he _thought_ he could trust.”

A few people in the back snickered in the way people always do when they know the end of a story before it is told.

“Anyway,” Professor Longbottom continued, “I had always been afraid of Professor Snape, ever since I was a first-year. And being the leader of an underground resistance had done absolutely nothing to change this fact. But being that I _was_ the current leader, unofficially in the eyes of the Carrows, whenever anything really wrong occurred under them, I would have been the one to be sent to the Headmaster’s office.

“One such day, I and several of the Hufflepuff recruits made a plan to sneak a very important parchment out of the castle. On this parchment, we had all made notes of where the Carrows could be found at any given moment of the day, Death Eaters we had seen coming in and out of the castle, anything we thought might be useful to those on the outside, even if it could only be used once the war was over, as a record.”

The entire classroom was silent, save for the occasional shoe scraping against the legs of their stool. No teacher had the ability to capture their students’ attention quite like Professor Longbottom.

“Making the record was easy enough,” Professor Longbottom went on to say, picking Dolores up once again and allowing her to ride in his open palm. “The challenge was actually getting the records out. All student mail was opened and monitored to make sure nothing questionable could be sent by or to the students. What had to be done was a group of students had to sneak out of bed in the middle of the night, avoid all signs of detection, and get the letter to an unregistered owl that would send it to the Order of the Phoenix. Unfortunately, we were all caught before we were even halfway there, and, naturally, we were immediately sent to the Headmaster’s office, in the middle of the night, to face the wrath of Professor Snape.”

A collective gasp shuddered across the room. Even Albus couldn’t help but participate.

“Of course, I did my best to put up a brave front for my fellow capture comrades, but I would have given anything at that moment to have an asteroid crash through the castle walls and crush me flat.”

Professor Longbottom set Dolores down on one of the tabletop and slammed his fist into his left palm to help illustrate this better. A few of the Hufflepuff girls jumped, but soon brought their complete attention back to the story.

“Naturally, Professor Snape didn’t remain in his office all through the night, waiting for anyone who _might_ be sent to him; so we all just had to sit there and wait for him to come to us. The Carrows even locked us in so we couldn’t escape.

“We sat in those chairs for two hours, sixteen minutes, and thirty-eight seconds.” Professor Longbottom spoke the time in a pained sort of way, as though just saying it made him feel all the panic and anxiety he must have felt back then. “My friend Ernie Macmillan was wearing a watch, and I made sure I knew exactly what time it was at all times.”

At the mention of the other boy’s name, Fairfax Macmillan smiled proudly and she began to hold her head up a little bit higher. All the same, it didn’t completely overtake the quiet unrest as the students sat together, waiting to hear how the story ended, even though they all knew on some level it couldn’t have been that bad. Professor Longbottom was standing right in front of them, perfectly fine, after all.

“Finally, Professor Snape came up to his office. We had all assumed that the long wait had just been part of the torture,” Professor Longbottom told his students in a hushed voice. “But he looked at us as though we were sitting there and had had the Carrows wake him up just to annoy him. So he snapped at us, ‘What are you all doing out of bed?’

“None of us knew what to say. We were all taken completely by surprise. ‘Get back to your houses, all of you, right now, before I expel the lot of you!’”

The voice that Professor Longbottom had assigned to Professor Snape, Albus knew was meant to be scary, but all it accomplished was to make the students giggle. Albus wondered if Professor Snape really had sounded like this, and if the students all laughed at his voice the way the kids in his class were doing now. How many of his friends would have been expelled if Professor Snape knew they were laughing at the way he spoke?

“We were shocked, but we certainly weren’t going to wait around for him to change his mind. We raced down the staircase and out into the corridor. Everyone else was racing ahead of me, making their way down to the Hufflepuff common room, but I had to stop when I heard a noise like something falling behind me. I turned around just in time to see our parchment fluttering down to the floor. It hadn’t been torn, destroyed, splotched. It didn’t even have a note written on it. Professor Snape had just dropped it down the staircase for one of us to find.

“That was when I first started to suspect something was off.” Professor Longbottom spoke in an ominous sort of tone, regaling in his younger days. “When I first believed maybe he wasn’t as horrid a man deep down as he wanted us all to believe.”

“Is that the end of the story?” a Hufflepuff named Micah Oswald raised his hand and asked. “Can we hear one about the Battle of Hogwarts now?”

“Hold on.” Professor Longbottom stopped before his entire class could erupt in agreement. “Let’s at least _pretend_ we did something productive today before we move on to another story. Does anyone have any questions of me? About anything, anything at all? It doesn’t have to be Herbology related.”

Still, the classroom remained silent and still. Albus, however, did have a question he was hoping he would be able to run by his teacher, although he wasn’t quite sure he felt safe asking it.

“The sooner somebody asks a question, the sooner you’ll all get to hear another war story.”

Finally, Albus made his decision and raised his hand. As Herbology was one of the few classes he did not share with Scorpius or Rose, Albus felt safe in asking his teacher this question in such an open environment. Besides, it was unlikely any of the Hufflepuffs would be braving the Slytherin Dungeons just to tattle on him to Scorpius.

“Yes, Mr. Potter,” Professor Longbottom called on him once again, picking Dolores back up. “What would you like to be enlightened with?”

“Did you ever ask anyone outside of Dumbledore’s Army for help?”

“You mean among the Slytherins, Mr. Potter?” Professor Longbottom questioned with wide eyes. “Do you think I had a death wish?”

“No.” Albus remained serious. “I mean just anyone outside of the resistance. To someone who knew something or could have done something than no one inside the organization could have.”

“Well,” Professor Longbottom pondered aloud as he considered his answer, “we didn’t go to any of the other teachers, if that’s what you mean. The school was very much under Lord Voldemort’s thumb, and we knew if any of our professor were caught helping us, it would mean their end. We had known our teachers for years, shared a bond with them. We couldn’t risk any of them suffering such a horrible fate.”

Albus bit at the inside of his cheek, wondering what consequences his own actions might bring.

“That doesn’t mean, however, that we didn’t reach outside out own organization for help,” Professor Longbottom then went on to explain. “All the members of Dumbledore’s Army had significantly more eyes watching them than any other member of the student body, even if the Carrows could never prove anything. Occasionally, members would reach out to housemates that weren’t an official part of the resistance to relay information. If they had gotten caught, their punishment would have been just as bad, if not worse, than if one of use were caught. Yet, even if they were not a part of the D.A., these students who helped still very much believed in the concept of house unity, and on that concept alone, were willing to go straight into the belly of the beast.”

Albus nodded, happy with the answer he had been given. He now knew exactly what he had to do.

“Now then.” Professor Longbottom broke his tone. “I do believe I now owe you all a Battle of Hogwarts story.”

Once again, the greenhouse burst out in large cheers, which Professor Longbottom had to frantically quiet as he believed to have seen the unmistakable shadow of Professor Flitwick move across one of the windows.

“It all started quite early in the morning. There was still a chill in the air…”

 

* * *

 

 

Even after nearly a week of nonexistent schoolwork, the noble house of Gryffindor still felt the necessity to celebrate the end of the term. Late at night, long after most students would have begun winding down, the common room was still a buzz with activity. There would be no classes tomorrow, so no one worried about what kind of sleep they would get. Food and drinks had been pilfered from the kitchen, with elves even assisting in the collection, several different radios were playing, all at different stations, and every piece of furniture and much of the carpeting was taken up by students playing games, chatting about holiday plans, and even creating last minute efforts to change the makes on their term reports.

That night, Albus stayed up later than he ever had before in his life. A stomach full of Licorice Wands, Chocolate Frogs, candy canes, and other sugary things had help to bring that about. A few lone figures remained, some collecting empty cups and plates, others sprawled across the floor and pieces of furniture, in various stages of sleep. But Albus had a plan very set in his mind, and he was determined to follow through with it, not caring what anyone else thought.

He was going to invite Maddox Dugan to join the Arcane ScoRA.

Wanting to make sure nothing could happen to blow up in his face, Albus scanned the few remaining in the common room for familiar faces. The first-years had been the first to depart from the festivities. Even Dominique, who normally did not care for parties or other large gatherings, had stayed awake, feeling her duties as a prefect inclined her to maintain an order of decorum among the Gryffindors, even though Victoire and the other prefects did not share her opinion, all of them leaving hours before. James and Fred were still reclined in the corner, a half-dozen hostage pillows scattered around them. Drifting in and out of states of consciousness, it seemed very unlikely they would have the ability to comment on anything he might say to Maddox.

Maddox himself was resting, dazed and sprawled out along one of the couches with no one to share it with. He appeared to be one the very verge of sleep, the warm fire and squishy cushions inviting it, but Albus could tell the older boy was still fighting to stay awake.

“Maddox.” Albus approached the older boy carefully. “Is it okay if I ask you something…in private?”

“Sure, Little Potter.” Maddox groaned and strained as he pushed himself off the sofa. His entire face stretched as he yawned and his hand over his eyes. It was a pretty clear that leaving his cozy little corner was one of the last things he wanted to do, but he still allowed Albus to lead him away from the few remaining Gryffindors and into a tiny alcove where Albus felt confident that their conversation could not be heard.

“Alright, Albus,” Maddox said sleepily. “What’s on your mind?”

Before truly committing to the events set in motion, Albus made one last survey of their surroundings, making sure they were completely alone.

“Do you know how all these creatures have been getting into the school?”

“Little Potter, I know that swarm at the Quidditch match was scary, but it was more than a month ago. Nothing strange has happened since, and it was only one freak event.”

Maddox hardly seemed swayed. Albus knew the fourth-year more than likely believed Albus was just being a scaredy-cat and coming to him like a frightened child. Funny how Albus actually did feel very much like that at the moment.

“What about the Erkling that got into the corridors that night?” Albus listed off. “And then there were the Chizpurfles before that!”

Maddox nodded, but he yawned loudly and rubbed his fist across his eyes. Albus began to question the wisdom of consulting the boy so late at night. Surely he could have just as easily caught him along tomorrow morning when everyone was rushing around, preparing their things for when they would leave on the train.

But there was no turning back from his plan now.

“Yes, yes,” Maddox agreed with the younger student, still groggy. “But what is it you are trying to say?”

“Well, me and my friends Scorpius Malfoy, and Rose Weasley, my cousin; you remember her. We have formed a society, a secret society.”

“What kind of secret society?”

“To find out how all these creatures are getting into the school.”

“Uh-huh,” Maddox said as he stifled a yawn, expressing the same sort of bored interest that most people showed towards small children. “And how are you going to do this?”

“We don’t know,” Albus confessed, “but we’ve already done something about them. You remember the Erkling, don’t you? And how it was found in the courtyard?”

“I suppose you and your friends lured it off one of the towers and let it fall to its death, didn’t you?”

When Albus delayed in giving a direct answer, Maddox’s eyes suddenly flew open as though a bucket of cold water had been dumped on his head.

“You did, didn’t you?”

“We’re called the Arcane ScoRA, and I was wondering if you wanted to join us.”

The last part of that sentence came out a little faster than the rest of his speech, but Albus couldn’t help it. Talking about the organization like this gave him such a rush. Before, when it was just him talking about it with Scorpius and Rose, it was just a stupid little kids’ club. But now that it was out in the open, with a new potential member, an older member who could add so much to the society, it brought at whole new energy to the idea.

Maddox seemed very wide awake now. His expression became quite similar to that of someone who had just swallowed a whole clove of garlic.

“Join you?” Maddox repeated. “Well, that is quite an offer, Little Potter. What exactly does this ‘Arcane ScoRA’ do?”

“Well, we’ll probably change the name one you join too. Although, Rose, Scorpius, and I _were_ the original founders, and adding more letters to the name every time we get a new member would probably complicate things...”

He was rambling again, but this time he was able to bring himself to a stop once he noticed the unsure expression on Maddox’s face. It was not the expression of one who was immediately ready to join the ranks, or so Albus assumed

“Little Potter, I really have to tell, I don’t know quite how to react to this whole idea. And rushing into things half-cocked never helped anyone

“But I’ll tell you what, Albus,” Maddox spoke up again once he saw the disappointment in Albus’ eyes. “Let me take the Christmas holiday to think about it. I’ll have a better idea of what I am able to do once I return to Hogwarts.”

It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t exactly a no either. And it certainly didn’t seem like he was going to go running to a teacher the first chance he got.

“Go to bed, Little Potter,” Maddox told him before heading off to his own tower. “You won’t be able to sleep on this train ride home. Believe me.”

 

* * *

 

 

“…and remember,” Rose rambled the next morning at breakfast, “we all have our assignments for over the holidays.”

Albus suddenly flashed back to attention and looked up from his eggs and sausage. _Assignments?_ How much of the conversation had he missed?

“Scorpius, your parents and grandparents know all kinds of important people, and adults never give kids the whole story.”

The next part of Rose’s statement was spoken with a sly smile. “Of course, they also don’t pay attention to what they say around kids either. What you need to do is listen to everything they say. Listen to anything they say about the school, and write down anything you think might be important. And maybe once we put it all together it will mean something.”

“I’ve got it,” Scorpius replied, reaching down to grab the handle of his trunk.

Rose and Scorpius didn’t seem the slightest bit worried about anyone hearing their conversation. The Great Hall was such a rushing mass of chaos this morning, it seemed unlikely that anyone would be paying attention to the conversation of the miniscule first-years.

“Albus and I always spend Christmas together, and we know our assignments,” Rose finished. “So…I suppose that’s it.”

“I hope you two both have a happy Christmas,” Scorpius told the two cousins before turning to make his way towards the door. He didn’t so much as look back at the two of them, but he eventually caught up to an older girl whom Albus recognized as Jocelyn Dale and the two of them walked out of the Great Hall together.

 

* * *

 

 

The train station was freezing cold. It almost made Albus wish he had decided to stay at school over the holiday just so he could be inside right now with a fire and elves who, with a near empty school, would have nothing better to do than bring him cup after cup of hot chocolate. _With mandated union breaks, of course,_ he soon thought to himself when his eyes met with Rose, thinking that somehow his Aunt Hermione might be able to hear his thoughts through her daughter.

“First-years now boarding!” Hagrid called out, looking perfectly content in his heavy moleskin coat.

“About time!” Rose gasped as she raced for the doors, along with the swarm of other first-years.

Albus followed Rose closely, for he had no idea where they were going, although he did know there was a specific destination in mind. On any other ride on the Hogwarts Express, Albus and all of his cousins would scatter among the various compartments of the train. Christmas time was different, however.

This time, the entire Weasley clan had reserved the largest compartment on the train just for them. With all of them in different classes, years, and activities having nothing to do with school, it was a rare moment when they could all be together. Albus was fairly confident that this particular train compartment had been built solely to accommodate the Weasley family. There had always been a lot of them.

The ride home for Christmas holidays was the one time the Weasley cousins would make sure they were all together.

Eventually, Rose and Albus found the large compartment, seeming the size of a house with just the two of them inside alone. But eventually, the second-years were allowed on the train, and Roxanne joined them. She was soon followed by Fred and James, who gave way to Louis and Lucy. Then came Molly, Dominique, and finally, Victoire. By then, every student had boarded. No more than a moment or so after Victoire took her seat, the train shifted and began chugging along the tracks, bringing nearly the entire student body of Hogwarts home.

Uncle Bill’s children all sat in a neat row of one another. Victoire was writing _something_ in a composition book, holding it close to her chest so no one else in the car could read it. Dominique sat pouring over a textbook entitled _O.W.L. Exam Preparation in Your Spare Time_ , chewing on her index fingernail, while Louis went over the parchment of Quidditch strategies that Tracy had handed out to the entire Quidditch team. James, Fred, and Roxanne had the exact same piece of parchment, but they were hardly giving it the same consideration that their older cousin was. The three of them had a piece of parchment in front of them as well, but the ink that had bled through page showed a logo with three intertwining W’s. More than likely something for Uncle George’s shop, something either involving a new product or the cut they would get for selling it.

Molly and Lucy sat side by side, barely an inch of height difference between their two brunette heads. Molly, as a fifth-year, had her O.W.L.s coming up soon as well, but from her calm, nearly dazed expression on her face. She did not appear to share the same anxiously frantic attitude towards the exam that her cousin did. Then again, Albus had never met any two people less alike than Molly and Dominique.

Occasionally, the older cousins would exchange conversation with one another, but even though Albus and Rose were sitting right beside each other, they didn’t say a word. Albus would look over to his side every now and again, but Rose would always be sitting at a sort of rapt attention, as though all that was happening inside her head was plenty to entertain her. Not willing to find out what the reaction would be if Rose were pulled out of these thought, Albus let her be and stared out the window. He watched as the scenery changed into forests, and fields, villages, and eventually the beginnings of London.

“Attention, students, attention,” the conductor’s voice called out. “We will be arriving at Kings Cross in fifteen minutes. Please bundle up and have a happy Christmas.”

Albus sighed wearily as he gathered up his cloak and other knit things, mentally preparing himself for what he knew the holidays would bring this year just as they did every year. He wished himself a happy Christmas before following his cousins out of the compartment and into the madness.

 

* * *

 

 

“ALBUS! JAMES! ROSE!”

Albus turned his head to the right, in the direction of the loud, but very familiar voice of his little sister. Lily was the first person to spot them just as Rose stepped off the train. By the time Rose had both feet firmly on the platform, Albus’ parents and Aunt Hermione were approaching them, with Lily and Hugo racing ahead of the pack.

Out the corner of his eye, Albus couldn’t help but notice a slightly sick expression take over Rose’s face, and he some clue as to the reason behind it. This was the first time his cousin would be seeing her father since she had left for Hogwarts; her father that had told her if she did not get into Gryffindor, he would disinherit her. In the letters from home, none of them had mentioned Uncle Ron’s feelings about his only daughter being Sorted into Ravenclaw. For weeks now, Albus had been trying to remind Rose that nobody disinherited their children because of their Sortings anymore, least of anyone from the Weasleys. Albus couldn’t think of another family more devoted to one another.

Besides, even if Uncle Ron _did_ disinherit her, it wasn’t as though Rose didn’t have a half dozen other branches of the Weasley family tree that would take her in.

Speaking of which, it was at the point the large collection of Weasley cousins parted ways into the arms of several waiting groups of aunts and uncles. Dominique and Louis rushed to Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur, their mother gushing in French and them speaking shorter French phrases back, leaving Bill standing off to the side, waiting for the English portion of the reunion. Victoire had all but disappeared, more than likely gone off to meet Teddy Lupin, who was nowhere to be found either. Fred and Roxanne raced with their hands full over to their mother, setting their trunks at Aunt Angelina's feet, and then placing their school reports in one hand and a large stack of what had to be order forms for Weasley Wizard Wheezes in the other. Molly and Lucy were already gone, even though Uncle Percy and Aunt Audrey were still standing on the platform waiting for them; no doubt the two sisters believed they may have a chance to do some shopping in the Muggle shops of London before their parents realized what happened.

“ALBUS!” Lily shrieked, nearly tackling Albus to the ground in a remarkably strong hug for someone her size. Hugo dashed up from right behind her, choosing Rose as his target, but actually succeeding in knocking his older sibling to the concrete. Rose yelped, but then started laughing and hugging her younger brother back. The relationship between the two of the was quite different from the battle-laced one that existed between the Potter children.

“Boys,” Albus’ dad greeted his sons as soon as the remaining crowd of family members reached them. “You both had a good term, I trust?”

“Oh, of course, Dad. And I’ve been taking good care of little Albie-kins too,” James said, playfully ruffling Albus’ hair in what Albus knew to be a sarcastic act before suddenly becoming more serious. “Hi, Mum. How are you today?”

Before greeting her firstborn son, their mother held out her hand expectantly. Albus couldn’t help but smirk at the family ritual. Every year when they had picked James up from the Kings Cross, their mother would first ask to see his school report, with particular attention paid to the disciplinary file, before decide just how happy she was to see him.

“I’m very well, James,” she remarked as her son handed her the folded piece of paper. After thoroughly reading the report and folding it back again. “Only three detentions this term?”

“The year is still young,” James joked and laugh, but instantly stopping as soon as he saw that his mother did not find his words nearly as amusing as he had. Wisely, he chose to abandon the topic of conversation and turned to his younger sister, who still had her arms wrapped tightly around Albus’ middle. “Lily, don’t I get a hug?”

Lily stopped for a moment to regard James with a critical gaze before deciding on her words. “Did you bring me anything from Hogwarts?”

“It’s not a holiday destination, Lily,” James said to his sister, repeating what he had told her at last year’s holiday, and the year before that. “It’s a school. There isn’t a gift shop!”

“That means no, doesn’t it?” Lily pouted.

_No hug for James, it would appear,_ Albus thought to himself, amused.

“Rose!” Aunt Hermione rushed to her daughter the moment Hugo released his clinging grip around her neck and the two of them pushed themselves up onto their feet. “You look wonderful!”

“Hello, Mum,” Rose greeted her mother. “Where’s Dad?”

“Oh, he’s off showing of that car to your Uncle George,” Aunt Hermione answer, shaking her head, annoyed. “I swear, the man passes one Muggle driver’s test, and suddenly he believes he is somehow an expert in the ways of Muggle society.”

“I don’t believe _you_ have a driver’s license, Hermione,” Albus mother teased, wagging her finger at his aunt.

Albus’ dad snickered at the comment while Aunt Hermione rolled her eye, but Rose kept her eyes on the platform entrance. Soon ahead, two redheaded men bundled down in Muggle winter clothes through the solid brick platform, laughing arm and arm, and Uncle George wearing his hilarious one-ear earmuff. The women of the family had all called Uncle George’s winter headgear tasteless and tacky, but the cousins, as with everything else Uncle George did or made, found it incredibly amusing.

Eventually, the two adult brothers stopped kidding around with one another long enough to meet of with their families. Uncle George rushed over to Aunt Angelina, taking the order forms in one hand and hugging his wife around the shoulder with the other. Roxanne rushed forward to hug her both her parents, and after a rather forceful yank from his sister, Fred did too.

Uncle Ron watched his brother’s family for a moment before finally approaching his own, setting his sights on the body closest to him: Rose. Albus’ cousin reached back towards him to grab a hold of his hand and took a deep, nervous breath.

“Ohhhh!” Uncle Ron caught Rose up in a giant hug and spun around. “There’s my little Rosie Cosy-Toesies!”

Hugo laughed at the image of his sister swirling through the air at top speed, and the rest of the adult all smiled at the affectionate display, but Rose simply seemed bewildered. Of all the reaction she must have prepared herself for, this had not been one of them.

“I guess he’s gotten over it,” Albus shrugged after Uncle Ron set his daughter down and Rose’s feet were firmly on the ground.

Uncle Ron raised an eyebrow at Albus’ comment. “What’s all this about then?”

“At the beginning of the term,” Albus reminded him, “you told Rose that if she wasn’t Sorted into Gryffindor, that she wasn’t you daughter anymore.”

Uncle Ron laughed at Albus’ word, but stopped once he noticed the nervous expression his daughter was sharing with the ground, and her anxiously shifting feet.

“Rosie,” he said, suddenly sounding more serious. “Rosie, look at me.”

Finally, he was able to get Rose to look him in the eyes. Albus watched his cousin chew on her bottom lip and wring her cloak through her fists.

“Rosie, no matter what house you would have gotten Sorted into, I would have been proud of you,” he told Rose, making sure that everything said and how he said it left no doubts as to the sincerity of his words. “You’re my baby. I raised you for eleven years, and everything you’ve ever done has made me proud. Getting Sorted into Gryffindor, or Ravenclaw, or Hufflepuff does not change that.”

James began playing an pretend violin to go along with Uncle Ron’s speech, which was put to a prompt end when Albus elbowed him in the stomach. _Gryffindor really is starting to rub off on me._

“And your mother and I have always know you were a smart cookie! Her parents don’t stop reminding me.”

That last comment was said as a whisper, but luckily, Aunt Hermione didn’t hear it. Rose was starting to look a little better, but there was a certain glint her eyes that let Albus know that she had heard something that she planned on using against her father.

“Any house?” Rose asked with a raised eyebrow. “Even Slytherin?”

“Okay, let’s get going!” Uncle Ron clapped his gloved hands together, thoroughly trying to avoid answering that particular question. “We feels like going for a hot chocolate before we leave for Grimmauld Place?”

“Me, me, me!” Lily and Hugo both shouted, jumping up and down.

The smaller children raced ahead to the platform with Uncle Ron right one their heels, as though he could not get away from his daughter, or rather her question, fast enough. But Rose was soon chasing after him, shouting her argument all along the way.

“I’m going to tell my children to ask the hat to put them in Slytherin just to make sure you really mean that!”


End file.
